Rebel With A Cause
Wednesday, 21. May 2008, 02:04:28
By The Telegraph
Saturday May 17 2008
If you had an uncle Denis who wore sheepskin jackets and went barefoot, you may well want to be like him. Especially if you were nine years old, growing up in Crieff in rural Scotland in the Seventies, when life was a wee bit conservative and your elder brother was brilliant at everything and destined to be head boy at school.
Surely, like Ewan McGregor, you too may then have thought that to be an actor like uncle Denis would be a fine thing.
Though Denis Lawson was no Brando or Dean, to the tweedy townsfolk of Crieff he was all rebel. And something of that archetype clearly appealed to his nephew, and still does.
Ewan McGregor has built a career out of making unconventional choices. "I like off-the-wall things," he says of his work to date, which has seen the 37-year-old Scot play a junkie in Trainspotting, a bisexual Seventies rock star in Velvet Goldmine and a crooning 19th-century bohemian poet in Moulin Rouge. Even his decision to don cloak and lightsaber as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels can be seen as equally perverse, given his indie-cinema credentials and the advice of that same uncle Denis (himself a veteran of the first three Star Wars films). McGregor recalls how Lawson said "don't do it", for fear of the young actor getting forever typecast.
Today, in a pub near his home in north London, McGregor, casual in jeans and a sweater, can say of working with George Lucas on the world's most famous sci-fi epic: "It's nice to be involved in that legend". And he certainly lived to work again, most recently on stage as Shakespeare's villainous Iago in Othello ("I loved it -- it's definitely been the hardest challenge of my career") and on screen as Ian, an aspiring cockney in Woody Allen's new thriller, Cassandra's Dream ("a different ball game").
But though he'll happily talk about his job, and is totally believable when he says that work is "the thing that matters; everything else around it can be fun, but if it's more important than your work, then you're in trouble", our conversation only really shifts up a gear when we get onto the subject of motorbikes.
Much of McGregor's appeal is that regular people, who the famous sometimes refer to as 'civilians', feel they can relate to him. This is partly because he comes across as something of a reluctant Hollywood star -- he still lives in England, is still married to his first wife, is protectively private about his three children, hasn't traded in his Scottish accent for some transatlantic travesty, and never courts the celeb-obsessed tabloids. But, more than this, he has twice taken time out to do what every man would love to do -- go on a road trip with his best mate.
"I met Charley when we did a film called The Serpent's Kiss in 1997. It didn't turn out to be the world's best film, but we had a good time," says McGregor of how he hooked up with biker buddy Charley Boorman. "We shared a love of motorcycles and we'd both just become fathers for the first time, so I guess that bonded us together."
McGregor says he got his first motorbike when he was just out of drama school, aged 20. "I'd always wanted one. I remember standing outside a shop in Perth when I was 15, looking at a 50cc bike. I immediately knew that my life would be better if I had one." But mum and dad wouldn't allow it, so it was only when he moved to London that he bought one. "It was a 100cc, 4-stroke Honda, and whenever my parents came to visit I'd hide my helmet and other gear with the girl in the flat upstairs," he laughs.
He then rattles through his bike history with an enthusiast's passion: "A 1978 Moto Guzzi Le Mans -- well I thought it was, but when I rebuilt it, it revealed itself to be anything but; a Honda Fireblade, f**king fast; I got a Bandit as a way out of sports bikes". But now he's engaged in a love affair with old bikes, among which is a 1956 Sunbeam S7.
"The silhouette is just beautiful," he muses. "It was sold as the 'gentleman's touring bike'. I'd love to take it to the States." McGregor now has a collection of 10 bikes, mostly vintage, which he keeps in a garage near his house with his helmets and tools. He likes the old ones because he can "wonder who might have owned it and where it's been".
Recently, his dad saw his new garage: "My dad came down and said that his dad, my grandad, spent most of his time in his garage tootling about with motorbikes too." There is, says McGregor, an allure to the objects themselves. "I have a romance about motorcycles. I don't know where it comes from -- Elvis movies perhaps?"
Then we're onto Steve McQueen. "It doesn't get much better than The Great Escape," he smiles, alluding to the famous scene where McQueen tries to outrun the Wehrmacht on a stolen military bike and after a cross-country dash valiantly attempts to vault a barbed-wire fence.
"It's about solace and tranquillity," says McGregor. "Some people find it in the pub; McQueen found it in his hangar with his planes and bikes. I used to drink, but it didn't make me happy." (In fact, McGregor hasn't touched alcohol for seven years now.) He says he loves reading about McQueen. "I met his widow [Barbara] at the first Legend of the Motorcycle rally near San Francisco. The organisers asked me, her and Peter Fonda to judge the best bike."
Later, Barbara wrote to him. "She'd just watched Long Way Round on DVD, and she wrote: 'If Steve had been alive, he would have been riding along with you'." With the letter was Steve's copy of Ted Simon's classic account of riding around the world on a Triumph -- Jupiter's Travels, the book that inspired Ewan and Charley to embark on their first 20,000-mile adventure.
It is, says McGregor, "exhilarating riding into the unknown", but he and Boorman had no idea anyone else would be interested. But they were -- the book and DVD of the 2004 trip from London to New York, Long Way Round, were bestsellers, as were those of the pair's second journey, last year's Long Way Down, which saw the friends ride from John O' Groats in Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa.
"There's something essential about the experiences of travelling," says McGregor. "It's about real life. I believe in acting as a representation of people in the real world. If you just go from film set to film set, you have less to draw on." He cites Daniel Day-Lewis, whose work he admires, as an example of an actor who takes breaks between films.
"We've gone places where I'm not recognised; in some parts of the world, the concept of the Hollywood film system is so far removed from people's lives that it makes you question the whole thing," he says. "Look at these people in Siberia and Mongolia. Their lives are as real as mine."
Gregarious by nature, McGregor clearly relished the opportunity to meet people along the way, and apparently, the bikes helped. "There's something [about biking] that really lends itself to meeting people," he says. "You arrive in their environment, already exposed in it.
"If you're in a car, you step out of your environment into another -- it's a different thing." Everywhere they went, they were met with "incredible kindness", he says.
But clearly some of the real world experience was testing. As a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) ambassador, McGregor stopped off on both journeys to see the work the charity is doing. "It's not easy to see kids who aren't being looked after," he admits. "All through Ethiopia, there were children looking after animals on the hillsides in rags. But not seeing them doesn't mean they're not there."
He has no regrets. "It's a privilege to see this with UNICEF. They take you to places where you feel uncomfortable. But the fact the charity is there is a good thing."
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ewan McGregor, rebel with a cause.
Cassandra's Dream is on general release. Long Way Round (DVD, £17.99; book, Time Warner, £8.99), Long Way Down (DVD, £19.99; book, Sphere, £19.99)
- The Telegraph
Saturday May 17 2008
If you had an uncle Denis who wore sheepskin jackets and went barefoot, you may well want to be like him. Especially if you were nine years old, growing up in Crieff in rural Scotland in the Seventies, when life was a wee bit conservative and your elder brother was brilliant at everything and destined to be head boy at school.
Surely, like Ewan McGregor, you too may then have thought that to be an actor like uncle Denis would be a fine thing.
Though Denis Lawson was no Brando or Dean, to the tweedy townsfolk of Crieff he was all rebel. And something of that archetype clearly appealed to his nephew, and still does.
Ewan McGregor has built a career out of making unconventional choices. "I like off-the-wall things," he says of his work to date, which has seen the 37-year-old Scot play a junkie in Trainspotting, a bisexual Seventies rock star in Velvet Goldmine and a crooning 19th-century bohemian poet in Moulin Rouge. Even his decision to don cloak and lightsaber as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels can be seen as equally perverse, given his indie-cinema credentials and the advice of that same uncle Denis (himself a veteran of the first three Star Wars films). McGregor recalls how Lawson said "don't do it", for fear of the young actor getting forever typecast.
Today, in a pub near his home in north London, McGregor, casual in jeans and a sweater, can say of working with George Lucas on the world's most famous sci-fi epic: "It's nice to be involved in that legend". And he certainly lived to work again, most recently on stage as Shakespeare's villainous Iago in Othello ("I loved it -- it's definitely been the hardest challenge of my career") and on screen as Ian, an aspiring cockney in Woody Allen's new thriller, Cassandra's Dream ("a different ball game").
But though he'll happily talk about his job, and is totally believable when he says that work is "the thing that matters; everything else around it can be fun, but if it's more important than your work, then you're in trouble", our conversation only really shifts up a gear when we get onto the subject of motorbikes.
Much of McGregor's appeal is that regular people, who the famous sometimes refer to as 'civilians', feel they can relate to him. This is partly because he comes across as something of a reluctant Hollywood star -- he still lives in England, is still married to his first wife, is protectively private about his three children, hasn't traded in his Scottish accent for some transatlantic travesty, and never courts the celeb-obsessed tabloids. But, more than this, he has twice taken time out to do what every man would love to do -- go on a road trip with his best mate.
"I met Charley when we did a film called The Serpent's Kiss in 1997. It didn't turn out to be the world's best film, but we had a good time," says McGregor of how he hooked up with biker buddy Charley Boorman. "We shared a love of motorcycles and we'd both just become fathers for the first time, so I guess that bonded us together."
McGregor says he got his first motorbike when he was just out of drama school, aged 20. "I'd always wanted one. I remember standing outside a shop in Perth when I was 15, looking at a 50cc bike. I immediately knew that my life would be better if I had one." But mum and dad wouldn't allow it, so it was only when he moved to London that he bought one. "It was a 100cc, 4-stroke Honda, and whenever my parents came to visit I'd hide my helmet and other gear with the girl in the flat upstairs," he laughs.
He then rattles through his bike history with an enthusiast's passion: "A 1978 Moto Guzzi Le Mans -- well I thought it was, but when I rebuilt it, it revealed itself to be anything but; a Honda Fireblade, f**king fast; I got a Bandit as a way out of sports bikes". But now he's engaged in a love affair with old bikes, among which is a 1956 Sunbeam S7.
"The silhouette is just beautiful," he muses. "It was sold as the 'gentleman's touring bike'. I'd love to take it to the States." McGregor now has a collection of 10 bikes, mostly vintage, which he keeps in a garage near his house with his helmets and tools. He likes the old ones because he can "wonder who might have owned it and where it's been".
Recently, his dad saw his new garage: "My dad came down and said that his dad, my grandad, spent most of his time in his garage tootling about with motorbikes too." There is, says McGregor, an allure to the objects themselves. "I have a romance about motorcycles. I don't know where it comes from -- Elvis movies perhaps?"
Then we're onto Steve McQueen. "It doesn't get much better than The Great Escape," he smiles, alluding to the famous scene where McQueen tries to outrun the Wehrmacht on a stolen military bike and after a cross-country dash valiantly attempts to vault a barbed-wire fence.
"It's about solace and tranquillity," says McGregor. "Some people find it in the pub; McQueen found it in his hangar with his planes and bikes. I used to drink, but it didn't make me happy." (In fact, McGregor hasn't touched alcohol for seven years now.) He says he loves reading about McQueen. "I met his widow [Barbara] at the first Legend of the Motorcycle rally near San Francisco. The organisers asked me, her and Peter Fonda to judge the best bike."
Later, Barbara wrote to him. "She'd just watched Long Way Round on DVD, and she wrote: 'If Steve had been alive, he would have been riding along with you'." With the letter was Steve's copy of Ted Simon's classic account of riding around the world on a Triumph -- Jupiter's Travels, the book that inspired Ewan and Charley to embark on their first 20,000-mile adventure.
It is, says McGregor, "exhilarating riding into the unknown", but he and Boorman had no idea anyone else would be interested. But they were -- the book and DVD of the 2004 trip from London to New York, Long Way Round, were bestsellers, as were those of the pair's second journey, last year's Long Way Down, which saw the friends ride from John O' Groats in Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa.
"There's something essential about the experiences of travelling," says McGregor. "It's about real life. I believe in acting as a representation of people in the real world. If you just go from film set to film set, you have less to draw on." He cites Daniel Day-Lewis, whose work he admires, as an example of an actor who takes breaks between films.
"We've gone places where I'm not recognised; in some parts of the world, the concept of the Hollywood film system is so far removed from people's lives that it makes you question the whole thing," he says. "Look at these people in Siberia and Mongolia. Their lives are as real as mine."
Gregarious by nature, McGregor clearly relished the opportunity to meet people along the way, and apparently, the bikes helped. "There's something [about biking] that really lends itself to meeting people," he says. "You arrive in their environment, already exposed in it.
"If you're in a car, you step out of your environment into another -- it's a different thing." Everywhere they went, they were met with "incredible kindness", he says.
But clearly some of the real world experience was testing. As a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) ambassador, McGregor stopped off on both journeys to see the work the charity is doing. "It's not easy to see kids who aren't being looked after," he admits. "All through Ethiopia, there were children looking after animals on the hillsides in rags. But not seeing them doesn't mean they're not there."
He has no regrets. "It's a privilege to see this with UNICEF. They take you to places where you feel uncomfortable. But the fact the charity is there is a good thing."
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ewan McGregor, rebel with a cause.
Cassandra's Dream is on general release. Long Way Round (DVD, £17.99; book, Time Warner, £8.99), Long Way Down (DVD, £19.99; book, Sphere, £19.99)
- The Telegraph
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