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"WHAT I'VE BEEN
TOLD TO say," Ewan McGregor announces after chugging down
his
third beer, "is that we're in negotiations. But the truth
is, I want to do it,
they want me to do it, so I'm doing it." * The "it"
in question, of course, is
only the role of a lifetime, playing the most beloved Jedi master
ever to
tangle with the Dark Side. As the whole world is about to learn,
McGregor, 26,
has been signed to star as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the new
Star Wars
prequels, a bit of casting news that instantly makes him the biggest
thing out
of Scotland since argyle socks, or at least since Sean Connery.
* "Actually,"
says the scruffily charming actor in his bristly Highland burr,
"I really want
to play Princess Leia. Stick some big pastries on my head. Now,
that would be
interesting."
Last year, McGregor created
a huge splash--literally--by chasing an opium
suppository down a toilet bowl in the indie hit Trainspotting.
That harrowing
performance won him an Actor of the Year award from the London
Film Critics
Circle and made him one of the hottest young thespians in the
realm. Next to those battling brothers from Oasis, he's
become the biggest pop god in England, a national antihero for
the
post-punk-but-still-pissed-off generation. And yet, despite Trainspotting's
respectable run in the U.S. (it earned $16 million) and his role
opposite
Gwyneth Paltrow in the even more respectable Emma ($22 million),
most
Americans haven't a clue who he is--even if they did happen to
catch his
special guest spot on ER last February, in which he held Julianna
Margulies
hostage in a convenience store for the show's entire hour.
So who is this man who
would be Kenobi? For starters, he's the type of guy who
isn't afraid to drop trou in public, as American moviegoers are
about to
discover. In Peter Greenaway's new art-house mind-bender The Pillow
Book,
which opened June 6, McGregor plays a bisexual Englishman who
lets his Hong
Kong girlfriend draw calligraphy all over his bare body--including
his
unsheathed, um, lightsaber. "Being naked was far more worrisome
for everyone
else on the set than it was for me," he reports. "I
actually enjoyed it, the
truth be told. There was something incredibly powerful about it.
Usually you'd
get arrested for that sort of thing, but I got paid"
This month, American
audiences can also see McGregor--fully clothed--in
Brassed Off, a small-but-scrappy English film about a doomed mining
town. In
the fall, he'll be costarring with Nick Nolte and Patricia Arquette
in
Nightwatch, his first American thriller, in which he'll play a
morgue
attendant who gets mixed up in a murder. He'll also turn up as
a hapless
janitor who kidnaps Cameron Diaz in A Life Less Ordinary, a romantic
comedy by
the same writer-director-producer team that made Trainspotting.
And he's just
finished shooting Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, a David Bowie-Iggy
Pop-inspired love story set in the glam-rock '70s, due out next
year.
It's an eclectic slate
of projects, with the emphasis on smart, offbeat
independent films--in other words, the sort of movies that don't
spin off many
toy tie-ins. "When I met with agents in L.A., they would
tell me you had to do
two movies for yourself and then two for the business," he
says. "And I
thought, `F--- off. No, you don't. You do every film because you
want to do
good work. Because you're interested in making good movies and
working with
good people.' To do a crappy event movie for a lot of money, like
Independence
Day--I would never taint my soul with that crap."
Of course, there's a
truckload of irony pulling up here: The untainted
maverick is about to start shooting what could easily become the
most
commercially successful event movies ever made. If dusted-off,
20-year-old
releases can rake in a half billion bucks worldwide, imagine what
sort of cash
flow a fresh batch of Star Wars flicks will generate. Still, McGregor
sees a
difference. "I don't think of them as event movies,"
he says. "It's not like
being in Robocop 5 or something. The Star Wars movies are way
beyond studio
pictures. They're enormous. I can't say no."
There are certainly plenty
of reasons to say yes--like his 16-month-old
daughter, Clara (by wife Eve Maurakis, a French costume designer
he met while
filming an English TV production of Charlotte's Web two years
ago). "I was 6
years old when Star Wars came out," he explains. "I
remember standing outside
school waiting to be picked up, so excited. And my daughter's
going to be 6
when the new Star Wars movies are out. That's f---ing lovely in
a way, you
know?"
There's another family
connection to the series as well: McGregor says his
uncle, actor Denis Lawson (Local Hero), was "the only X-wing
pilot to survive
all three" of the original Star Wars movies. Lawson, not
surprisingly, was
also the inspiration for McGregor's own early acting ambitions.
"I was brought
up in a small conservative town [Crieff] in Scotland," he
says. "And my uncle
used to come up from London in the '70s wearing sheepskin waistcoats
and
beads, with no shoes and long hair, giving people flowers and
stuff. I just
went, wow. Right then I decided to become an actor--even though
I had no idea
what that meant."
What it meant initially
was leaving school at 16, a brief stint at a Scottish
repertory theater, then three years at the Guildhall School of
Music and Drama
in London. What it means now is that McGregor can barely stroll
the streets of
London without triggering a reenactment of the train station mob
scenes in A
Hard Day's Night. "It's not that bad, but it is on the cusp
of becoming a
problem," says Trainspotting director Danny Boyle. "All
that constant
recognition gets tiresome after a while. He can't even pick his
nose in
public."
VISITING NEW YORK, DOWNING
BREWS IN A CHELSEA restaurant, McGregor couldn't
seem less concerned with the perils of fame--or maybe he's simply
relishing
his last taste of American anonymity. Unassuming, unpretentious,
and on the
way to becoming utterly sloshed, he comes across as the ultimate
anti-celebrity, a bloke for all seasons. In any case, if anybody
in the room
is staring at him, it's only because he's been partying all night
and sort of
looks it (he's still got a big ink-stamp mark from a nightclub
smudged on his
wrist). "I love New York," he murmurs happily into his
beer.
Of course, now that he's
signed for Star War , these sorts of quiet public
moments are history. As the new Kenobi, he'll be swarmed by fans
in every
restaurant and nightclub ill every city on the planet. It's a
huge change in
his life, an instant thrust into global superstardom. "Ewan's
got the world at
his feet," as Brassed Off director Mark Herman puts it, "and
that makes this a
dangerous time for him." To deal with the intense pressure,
McGregor is using
that old Jedi mind trick of trying not to think about it. Instead,
he's
concentrating on his killer Alec Guinness impersonation.
"I have to get his
accent," he says. "He's got this very specific older
man's
voice. It'd be great if I could trace it back to his youth and
get it right."
He takes a swig of beer, clears his throat, and gives it a whirl.
"`Yoooz the
Force, Luke. Stretch out your feeeelings.'"
Now, if only he could nail that Carrie Fisher impersonation.
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