On 31 March 2021, one of Scotland's finest screen actors reaches a significant milestone. Ewan McGregor has lived over half of his life in the spotlight and he hits the big 50 with Star Wars fans counting down the days before the launch of his new Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Yet, while he enjoys the role and the trappings it brings, McGregor has never hankered after Hollywood celebrity, So, Cinema Paradiso salutes an actor who has always done things his own way when it comes to choosing a job, a career and a life.
Versatility is a word that crops up a good deal in discussions about Ewan McGregor. He may not be as chameleonic as his Obi-Wan forebear, Alec Guinness, but his brand of adaptability has made him highly effective across the generic range in both mainstream and independent pictures. In many ways, he possesses the same star quality that has enabled actors like Sean Connery and Michael Caine to persuade us they're in character while remaining recognisably themselves. Old masters like Clark Gable, James Cagney, Cary Grant. Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart had much the same gift. McGregor has certainly followed his own star since first appearing on the scene back in 1993 and has managed to stay at the top by playing the Hollywood game by his own rules. Who else could have avoided being sucked into the world of CGI comic-book blockbusters after playing such an iconic figure in the Star Wars universe? In truth, his CV isn't exactly studded with indisputable classics, Instead it's full of unexpected choices and interesting misfires that suggest McGregor is an actor who is enthused and challenged by what he does rather than someone who has pursued and settled for fame.
Good Crieff
Ewan Gordon McGregor was born in Perth on 31 March 1971, the son of teachers James and Carol, whose first child, Colin, had arrived two years earlier. The family lived in the market town of Crieff and the young Ewan spent idyllic summers on his bike and building dens in the woods with his pal, Eric. When he was nine, however, he realised he wanted to be like his uncle, Denis Lawson, who had just played Wedge Antilles in George Lucas's Star Wars (1977). The young pretender had appeared in a church hall production of David and Goliath when he was four and, the following year, had played the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood. But it hadn't dawned on him that one could act for a living like Uncle Denis, who had gone on to become the only X-Wing fighter pilot other than Luke Skywalker to survive the initial trilogy after taking flight in Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back (1981) and Richard Marquand's Return of the Jedi (1983). As McGregor later recalled, 'My brother Colin and I were picked up from school and taken to see it. We'd never seen my uncle on a big screen before, so it was pretty full on,' The experience made a deep impression on both siblings, as Colin would go on to become a Tornado pilot in the R,A.F., while Ewan would follow Lawson to the galaxy far, far away. While Colin became head boy at Morrison's Academy, Ewan contented himself with playing Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto at a school concert and fronting a band named Scarlet Pride before he achieved the four O Grades that enabled him to leave school at 16 and become a stagehand at Perth Theatre.
He didn't get off to the wokest of starts, however, as he was cast as an extra in a production of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India (which had been filmed in 1984 by David Lean) that he remembered required him to be 'blackened up and turbaned up'. McGregor also took an acting course at Kirkcaldy College of Technology before winning a place at 18 at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where his classmates included David Thewlis and Joseph Fiennes. Famously, he wrote a monologue about a legless oil rigger for one of the end-of-year showcases and promptly dried up after rolling on to the stage in a wheelchair. Fortunately, however, the extended silence was viewed as a daring acting choice to unsettle the audience and watching agent Jonathan Altaras remembered thinking McGregor was 'exactly what everybody was looking for in terms of sexiness, in terms of charisma, in terms of everything'.
Having left the Barbican YMCA to live in Snaresbrook, McGregor hunkered down in an illegally rented council flat in Leyton. But he wasn't there for long, as he left the Guildhall without completing his course after being offered the part of 1950s National Service interpreter and rock'n'roll fanatic Mick Hopper in Channel Four's Dennis Potter's series, Lipstick on Your Collar. Benefiting from his uncle's advice about camera eyelines and hitting his marks, McGregor followed this by essaying Napoleonic swashbuckler Julien Sorrel in the BBC serial, Scarlet and Black (both 1993), which was adapted from Stendhal's 1830 novel, The Red and the Black. As a result, he was able to move to the plush flat in Primrose Hill from which, he conceded in looking back on his hellraising phase, 'all the shenanigans started'.
Choose Life
McGregor had a family connection with Bill Forsyth, as Denis Lawson had played hotelier Gordon Urquhart in Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983). A decade later, his nephew made his feature bow in Forsyth's Being Human (1993), in which he played a Portuguese character named Alvarez landing on the African coast with the re-incarnating Robin Williams. Fortunately, he was better cast second time out, as Alex Law, who falls out big time with David Stephens (Christopher Eccleston) and Juliet Miller (Kerry Fox) over the suitcase of cash left by their overdosed flatmate, Hugo (Keith Allen). Introducing him to director Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave (1994) opened doors for McGregor, who had also just met production designer and future wife Eve Mavrakis on the set of a 1995 episode of Kavanagh QC (1995-2001).
More TV followed, when McGregor played a burglar who encounters a vampire in a final season episode of Tales From the Crypt (1989-96) and a convenience store thief who winds up at County General Hospital in 'The Long Way Round', an episode of ER (1994-2009) that earned him an Emmy nomination for Best Guest Star. But the movie roles had started coming thick and fast and McGregor followed playing journalist-cum-drug dealer Dean Raymond in Carl Prechezer's Cornish surfing saga, Blue Juice (1995), by excelling as Mark Renton alongside Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Begbie (Robert Carlyle), Spud (Ewen Bremner) in Danny Boyle's take on Irvine Welsh's bestseller, Trainspotting (1996). Having spent time with the heroin addicts at the Calton Athletic Recovery Group in Glasgow, McGregor lost two stone for a role that earned him cult status and gave him the licence to indulge what he later called 'a stupid teenager excitement, but in the body of an early 20s man'.
However, McGregor worked as hard as he partied, although he deeply regretted muffing the audition for Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibiity (1995) that handed Hugh Grant the chance to work with Ang Lee. Compensation came, however, in the chance to confound the schemes of the matchmaking Emma Woodhouse (Gwyneth Paltrow) as Frank Churchill in Douglas McGrath's adaptation of Austen's Emma. Famously, McGregor also got to strip and daub Vivian Wu's body with Japanese calligraphy as Jerome the translator in Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book before he ended 1999 as Andy Barrow, the militant miner who uses his tenor horn to woo fellow colliery band member Gloria Mullins (Tara Fitzgerald) in Mark Harman's Brassed Off.
A first trip to remake country followed in Nightwatch, as Ole Bornedal reworked his own Danish chiller, Night Watch (1994), by casting McGregor as Martin Bells, the law student on the graveyard shift at the local mortuary who is suspected of being a depraved serial killer by Inspector Thomas Cray (Nick Nolte). He found himself being manipulated again in cinematographer Philippe Rousselot's sole directorial offering, The Serpent's Kiss, as 17th-century Dutch gardener Meneer Chrome is hired by both nouveau riche landowner Thomas Smithers (Pete Postlethwaite) and his rival, James Fitzmaurice (Richard E. Grant), who hopes to bankrupt Smithers and steal his glamorous wife, Juliana (Greta Scacchi).
Seemingly able to flit at will between topics and time zones, McGregor returned to the present to reunite with Danny Boyle on A Life Less Ordinary (all 1997), a romantic fantasy in which a pair of angels (Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo) conspire to bring together humble janitor Robert Lewis (McGregor) and the boss's bored daughter, Celine Naville (Cameron Diaz). Having sprinted through the streets of Edinburgh to Iggy Pop's 'Lust For Life' in Trainspotting McGregor got to play a character based on the American rocker, as Curt Wild steers glam star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) towards a stunt stage death in Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine, which earned costume designer Sandy Powell a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination. McGregor would later return to this era in, Gimme Danger (2016), Jim Jarmusch's admiring documentary about Iggy and The Stooges.
The music came from an earlier age in Mark Herman's Little Voice (both 1998), which saw McGregor play the second-string role of Billy, a telephone engineer who tries to prevent Scarborough talent agent Ray Say (Michael Caine) from exploiting L.V. (Jane Horrocks), a bashful young woman who can sing in the style of everyone from Gracie Fields to Judy Garland. However, McGregor was very much the predator in James Dearden's Rogue Trader (both 1999), which retells the story of Barings Bank employee Nick Leeson, whose unchecked activities resulted in losses of over £800 million.
Feeling impregnable, McGregor had joined fellow Britpackers Jonny Lee Miller, Jude Law, Sadie Frost and Sean Pertwee in forming the Natural Nylon production company in 1997. He had also invited Denis Lawson to direct him in his London stage bow, David Halliwell's Little Malcolm and His Struggles Against the Eunuchs (1998-99), which had been filmed by Stewart Cooper in 1974, with a little help from ex-Beatle, George Harrison. Furthermore, having taken time out to direct the 'Bone' segment of Tube Tales, McGregor entered the shady world of espionage in Stephan Elliott's Eye of the Beholder, as British intelligence officer Stephen Wilson becomes dangerously obsessed with blackmailing assassin, Joanna Eris (Ashley Judd). But the standout role of 1999 pitched McGregor into an entirely new stratosphere.
May the Force Be With You
Alec Guinness had once played the Perth Theatre and McGregor got to follow in his footsteps again when he was cast as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's first directorial venture in 22 years. Denis Lawson had tried to persuade his nephew that this was a risky career move and McGregor would admit that he didn't enjoy the amount of green-screen acting required for such an effects-laden project. But, having passed through three sets of auditions, his competitive nature made the lure even stronger. As the apprentice to Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Obi-Wan embarks upon a mission to defend Queen Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) and her imperilled planet, Naboo, and McGregor was one of the few to emerge from the mixed notices that Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) received with his reputation enhanced. Hence, he was warmly welcomed back for Star Wars: Episode Two - Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode Three - Revenge of the Sith (2005).
But the McGregor march to superstardom hit an unexpected bump in the road in 2000, when Danny Boyle opted to go with the money men and replaced his two-time lead with Leonardo DiCaprio in his adaptation of Alex Garland's bestseller, The Beach. It took McGregor a long time to forgive and forget, but he threw himself into his work and gave a good account of himself as Irish author James Joyce in Pat Murphy's Nora (2000), which was one of the few features completed by Natural Nylon before McGregor cut his losses and walked away. He also set off on the trek of a lifetime for Polly Steele's documentary, Into the Wild (2001), as he joined the rangers based in the Canadian Arctic town of Churchill to supervise the six-week period when polar bears come to Hudon Bay in search of food.
Seeking to stretch himself, McGregor took himself to the other side of the world for Baz Luhrman's musical, Moulin Rouge!, in order to play Christian, the would-be poet who comes to Montmartre in 1900 and falls under the spell of a bohemian courtesan named Satine (Nicole Kidman). Despite demonstrating again that he possesses a decent singing voice, McGregor emerged from behind the red curtain to plunge into the all-action milieu of Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (both 2001), the winner of the Academy Awards for Best Editing and Sound, in which McGregor plays Specialist John Grimes heading to Mogadishu in Somalia in October 1993 as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force.
It was also a case putting the pedal to the metal when McGregor took to the track in the famous Lacetti in series eight of Top Gear (1977-), while the need for speed also prompted him to narrate Mark Neale's Faster (2003), an insight into the world of MotoGP that reflects McGregor's obsession with motorcycles. He would go on to narrate Neale's Fastest (2011) and Troy's Story (2005), Aaran Creece and William Mather-Brown's profile of Australian racer Troy Bayliss. Moreover, McGregor would join forces with buddy Charley Boorman for the three epic, globetrotting rides chronicled in Long Way Round (2004), Long Way Down (2007) and Long Way Up (2020).
But it's not just bikes that fascinate McGregor, as he and brother Colin have also teamed for a number of airborne documentaries, including The Battle of Britain (2010), Bomber Boys (2012) and RAF At 100 (2018). It's not all harum scarum when it comes to actualities, however, as McGregor has also celebrated his homeland in Hebrides: Islands on the Edge (2013) and Highlands: Scotland's Wild Heart (2016). Where else could you find all of these diverse documentaries available to rent on high-quality disc, but Cinema Paradiso? Having slowed down to reunite with Denis Lawson for the 2002 short, Solid Geometry , McGregor took another tilt at the romcom in Peyton Reed's Down With Love, a homage to those battles of the sexes starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson that stood back and admired the sparks being created by playboy Catcher Block and feminist author Barbara Novak (Renee Zellwegger). Naturally, McGregor pulled off the assignment with aplomb to reinforce his pin-up status. But the restless actor was soon in search of pastures new and signed up to play Joe Taylor in David Mackenzie's Young Adam (both 2003), an adaptation of Alexander Trocchi's 1950s novel about the relationship between a drifter and Les and Ella (Peter Mullan and Tilda Swinton), the married couple who hire him to work on their barge between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Forever in search of novelty, McGregor next hooked his star to Tim Burton's for Big Fish (2003), an adaptation of a Daniel Wallace novel that makes generous use of flashbacks so that Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) can discover whether the tall tales told by his father, Edward, have any basis in truth. Having revelled in playing a younger version of Albert Finney, McGregor took on another dual role in Michael Bay's The Island, in which Tom Lincoln discovers he has a clone named Lincoln Six Echo. Despite bringing him together with Scarlett Johansson, this sci-fi actioner became the first Bay film not to make a profit and Marc Forster's supernatural chiller, Stay (both 2005), scarcely set the tills ringing, either, despite casting McGregor as the psychologist who has just three days to dissuade college student Ryan Gosling from committing suicide. But the year that saw McGregor return to the boards as Sky Masterson in a West End revival of Guys and Dolls (which had been filmed with Marlon Brando in the role by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1955) wasn't without its lighter moments, as he went from voicing unemployed genius Rodney Copperbottom in Chris Wedges's Robots to taking the title role in Gary Chapman's Valiant, a tribute to the Royal Homing Pigeon Service that carried vital messages during the Second World War. Intriguingly, McGregor has been a keen pigeon fancier since playing one in Little Voice and he would return to the wartime setting as a farmworker named Chris, who is given his chance to do his bit for King and Country after being turned down for military service for having over-large hands in the McHenry Brothers's ribald animation, Jackboots on Whitehall (2010).
The Art of Keeping Busy There's nothing luvvie about McGregor, as he admits to choosing projects on gut instinct while reading scripts and taking that instinctive attitude on to the set. 'I'm not tortured,' he told one interviewer. 'I've never been one for a great deal of preparation. I don't sit in a library or do a lot of intellectual investigative work. I'm much better in the moment.' Intent on staying busy and enjoying himself, McGregor trusts in his talent and doesn't think about how his filmography holds up to scrutiny. Hence, he was happy to take a cameo as Uncle Ian, the banker-cum-spy whose sudden death sparks Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer) into action in Geoffrey Sax's lively take on Anthony Horowitz's Stormbreaker (2006).
This theory is also borne out by McGregor's other assignments in 2006, which saw him and Douglas Hodge play a gay couple contemplating their future in Ed Blum's ensemble comedy, Scenes of a Sexual Nature, and, because he had read the stories to his daughters, he reunited with Renee Zellwegger to play Beatrix Potter's devoted publisher, Norman Warne, in Chris Noonan's Miss Potter, which makes charming use of Alyson Hamilton's cel animation to bring the author's animal characters to life. This was Noonan's first feature since Babe (1995), the debut that had earned him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. But he has yet to produce a third feature, during which time the prolific McGregor has made 35 pictures.
Among them was Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream (2007), a London saga that cast McGregor and Colin Farrell as brothers who get drawn into a sinister plot to help their shady uncle, Tom Wilkinson. The devil alone knows what has happened to Dan Harris's take on Glen Duncan's book, I, Lucifer, which caused ripples in 2008 when it was revealed that Daniel Craig (who had reportedly pipped McGregor to the role of James Bond in Martin Campbell's Casino Royale, 2006) had shaved his head in order to play Satan inhabiting the body of McGregor's Declan Gunn.
A Chris Cleave novel provided the inspiration for Sharon Maguire's Incendiary, which saw McGregor work with a female director for the first time in playing a reporter whose affair with London mother Michelle Williams coincides with her husband and son's death at a football match that had been targeted by suicide bombers. Copper Matthew Macfadyen completes the ménage and Hugh Jackman stepped into his shoes when McGregor and Williams reunited in Marcel Langenegger's Deception (both 2008), in which a milquetoast Manhattan accountant is duped into joining a secret sex club by a smooth-talking lawyer, who turns out to be anything but a pal when one of the anonymous hook-ups goes missing.
Another kidnapping drives the plot in Ron Howard's Angels & Demons (2009), which sees Tom Hanks reprise the role of symbologist Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code (2006) in order to help Vatican Camerlengo, Fr Patrick McKenna, find the four cardinals who have been abducted by the Illuminti, In what turned out to be another busy year, McGregor slipped out of blockbuster mode to play the eponymous prisoner whose romance with cellmate Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey) refuses to run smoothly in the debuting John Requa and Glenn Ficarra's bittersweet comedy, I Love You Phillip Morris, which is available from Cinema Paradiso on both DVD and Blu-ray so that you can enjoy the film in a format that best suits you.
Viewers also need to keep their wits about them during Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare At Goats, which sees McGregor play an Ann Arbor journalist who joins retired special forces officer George Clooney in the hunt for Jeff Bridges, the founder of the top-secret psychic warfare unit, the New Earth Army. However, the narrative is much easier to follow in Mira Nair's Amelia (all 2009), a biopic of pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) that sees her drifting away from demanding tycoon husband George Putnam (Richard Gere) into the arms of fellow pilot, Gene Vidal (McGregor).
Versatility Is Its Own Reward
Throughout his career, McGregor has made no secret of the fact that he receives a lot of cookie-cutter screenplays. Despite his stellar status, he has always prioritised interesting roles over profit percentages and, consequently, he has tended to make films that place plot, character and theme above effects and gimmicks. He has also tried to help new directors establish themselves, while also taking up offers from such prominent film-makers as Roman Polanski, who cast him as the unnamed journalist who makes some disconcerting discoveries while helping former British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) write his memoirs in The Ghost (2010).
He was less prominent in Susanna White's Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, but still played a key role in absentia as dastardly uncle Rhys Ifans tries to steal the family farm while his brother is away fighting the Nazis. The missing father is seen in flashbacks in Mike Mills's Beginners, which draws on the director's own experiences to show how graphic designer Oliver Fields (McGregor) comes to reassess both his views on love and his relationship with his father after Hal (Christopher Plummer) comes out as gay at the age of 75. It's not often that McGregor is upstaged, but his generosity in this role did much to help Plummer win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also did himself a favour by turning down the role of Edward VIII in Madonna's take on the Abdication Crisis, W.E. (all 2010).
The coronavirus pandemic was partially anticipated in David Mackenzie's Perfect Sense, in which McGregor plays a chef who falls for epidemiologist Eva Green during an outbreak that robs people of their sensory perceptions. However, he was anything but the perfect partner for Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire (both 2011), as Kenneth seems to be using his position as the head of a covert black ops unit to place his lover in as much danger as possible. By contrast, it's fisheries expert Alfred Jones (McGregor) who finds himself being backed into a corner in Lasse Hallström's adaptation of Paul Torday's novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2012), as prime ministerial press secretary Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas) sees a PR windfall from helping financial adviser Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt) realise a project to bring salmon fishing to the arid Arab state.
Water poses a very different problem in another part of Asia in J.A. Bayona's The Impossible (2012), which sees the Bennett family separated in the aftermath of the 2004 Thai tsunami. McGregor's co-star, Naomi Watts, would receive an Oscar nomination for her performance, but the Scotsman was overlooked once more, as he often tends to be because he has the unfortunate habit of making acting look so easy that his artistry isn't always appreciated. The following year saw Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts being recognised in the Actress and Supporting categories for John Wells's adaptation of Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County (2013), but McGregor was quietly effective as Roberts's estranged husband and the father of 14 year-old Abigail Bresnan.
No Sign of Slowing Down
Despite the offers, McGregor has been reluctant to join the SFX circus. He has returned to the Star Wars franchise to voice Obi-Wan in the J.J. Abrams duo of The Force Awakens (2015) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), but he has steered clear of blockbusters since playing Elmont the head of the palace guard in Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), a CGI rejigging of the fable of Jack and the Beanstalk that under-performed at the box office after dividing the critics. They were more united in their dismissal of Seth MacFarlane's frontier spoof, A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), but McGregor's involvement was minimal, as his laughing cowboy is merely one of the many cameo spots.
His other film of 2014 saw him take the more substantial role of Brendan Lynch in Julius Avery's muscular crime thriller, Son of a Gun, in which teenager J.R. White (Brenton Thwaites) befriends Australia's public enemy No.1 and comes to regret agreeing to spring him from prison and participate in an audacious gold bullion robbery. But McGregor switched sides to join the thin blue line in David Koepp's Mortdecai (2015), as Scotland Yard inspector Alistair Martland recruits the roguish Lord Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) and his wife Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow) to recover a priceless Goya painting.
This may not rank among McGregor's finest hours, but Rodrigo Garcia's Last Days in the Desert most certainly should. Barely seen on its release, this intense reimagining of a New Testament passage casts McGregor as both Jesus and Satan, as He approaches the end of His period in the wilderness and comes to realise the magnitude of the task awaiting Him through an interaction with a young man (Tye Sheridan) who is eager to leave the home of his protective parents (Ciarán Hinds and Ayelet Zurer). A blend of fact and fiction also informed Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead (both 2015), as a lank-haired McGregor plays fictitious journalist Dave Braden trying to get the lowdown on jazz maestro, Miles Davis (Cheadle).
A knot of flashbacks keeps viewers honest while watching Gavin O'Connor's post-Civil War Western, Jane Got a Gun, as they try to put together the pieces of information that link widowed settler Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) with John Bishop (McGregor), the leader of the gang riding towards her property to settle an old score. Treachery is also on the agenda in Susanna White's interpretation of John Le Carré's Our Kind of Traitor (both 2016), as holidaymakers Perry and Gail MacKendrick (McGregor and Naomie Harris) come to regret befriending the larger-than-life Dima (Stellan Skarsgård) during their stay in Marrakech after British agent Hector (Damian Lewis) warns them that he is trying to flee from the Russian Mafia with a fortune in laundered cash.
Another literary titan, Philip Roth, provided the Pulitzer Prize-winning source for American Pastoral (2016), which would see McGregor make his directorial debut after Australian Philip Noyce dropped out. He would also star as Seymour 'Swede' Levov, the successful Jewish businessman who had married the Catholic beauty queen (Jennifer Connelly) who had presented him with a model daughter (Dakota Fanning). At the height of the protests against the Vietnam War, however, Meredith goes on the run after the owner of the post office in Newark, New Jersey is killed in a bomb attack and a distraught Swede has a fight to keep his perfect life together.
The landmarks kept cropping up, as McGregor returned to the small screen and emerged from the experience with a Golden Globe and a new partner, as his 22 year-old marriage came to an end after he fell for Fargo co-star Mary Elizabeth Winstead. In Season Three (2017), she played Nikki Swango, the fiancée of Minnesota parole officer Ray Stussy, who has never forgiven his brother, Emmit (both McGregor) for cheating him out of his share of their father's inheritance. However, while the lovers become embroiled in a murder case, Emmit finds himself being dogged by debt collector, V.M. Varga (David Thewlis).
McGregor's acceptance speech kept the gossip the columnists busy until they turned their attention away from his love life and on to his relationship with Danny Boyle, after bridges had been rebuilt during another award ceremony and the pair had embarked upon T2 Trainspotting (2017). McGregor had resisted a reunion after being left unmoved by Irvine Welsh's follow-up novel, Porno (2002). But he was sufficiently happy with the John Hodge adaptation that sees Mark Renton leave Amsterdam with his future in the balance and return to Edinburgh for the first time in two decades to find Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie waiting for him.
If the plaudits weren't exactly as enthusiastic as they had been for the original, the sequel was largely welcomed, with McGregor and Robert Carlyle being pipped to the Scottish BAFTA Best Actor award by Ewen Bremner. But 2017 still had one more twist for McGregor fans, as he was cast as Lumière the candlestick in Bill Condon's live-action Disney take on Beauty and the Beast. The assignment didn't go entirely to plan, however, as McGregor had to work with a vocal coach and re-record his lines after his initial French accent had sounded 'too Mexican'.
Having played a relationship expert whose own romance is threatened by an envious android in Drake Doremus's Zoe, McGregor took on the title role in Marc Forster's Christopher Robin (both 2018). Inspired by the characters in A.A. Milne's timeless Winnie the Pooh stories, the action centres on the now-adult companion of the willy nilly silly old bear, who devotes so much time to his job as an efficiency expert at Winslow Luggages that he neglects his family. Luckily, a trip to Hundred Acre Wood works wonders, but another grown-up child character isn't quite so fortunate in Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep (2019). Having survived his ordeal at the Overlook Hotel - which was chronicled in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining - Dan Torrance (McGregor) is working as a hospice orderly in New Hampshire when he is called upon to use his psychic powers to prevent young Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) from falling into the clutches of the leader of the True Knot cult, Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson).
As the new decade loomed, McGregor and Winstead decided to share the screen again by entering the DC Comics Extended Universe to play Roman Sionis (aka Black Mask) and Helena Bertinelli (aka The Huntress) opposite Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey. McGregor also confirmed that he will be returning as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a yet-to-be-titled series for Disney+. He also guested in an episode of Michael Sheen and David Tennant's BBC lockdown comedy, Staged (both 2020). So, in spite of his claim that 'it's very rare now for me to be in big hit movies', Cinema Paradiso is pretty confident that there is still plenty more to come from Ewan McGregor.
