ScreenWize

When Ewan McGregor found out that Roman Polanski was interested in casting him in his new film, he was completely gobsmacked. “It was so weird, because I hadn’t ever considered I would work with him,” says the actor in voice so soft and warm that it could sell Scotch whisky by the truckload. “I had always felt Polanski was out of reach somehow, and it had been a while since he’d made a film. I honestly never thought that it would be likely, so when I got a script from him and they said ‘he wants you to play in this new film called The Ghost Writer’, I asked ‘what does he want me to do?’ They said ‘he wants you to be the ghost writer.’ And that was that.”

As one of the world’s most successful and recognisable male actors – who has stared in films as diverse as Trainspotting, Star Wars, Black Hawk Down and Moulin Rouge – you would think that McGregor could just about select any role he wanted. But like many at the top of the acting profession, he merely claims he’s been lucky. “I’ve never thought I could have my pick and choice of everything,” he says. “I feel I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with really great people.” He’s just as modest about the idea that he has carefully avoided being typecast by taking roles across a range of genres –from horror and comedy to action blockbusters and musicals. “I’m just easily pleased,” he laughs. “I read things and get drawn to different projects. Of course, I don’t want to get stuck in one direction, but I don’t go out of my way to do certain things. It’s just a question of your own taste in the end.”

McGregor’s career breakthrough came in his partnership with director Danny Boyle (of Slumdog Millionaire fame). Boyle cast the then twenty-two year old actor in his first feature film Shallow Grave in 1994 and once again two years later in the award winning Trainspotting. McGregor’s portrayal of the drug addicted, violent and strangely likeable central character Renton, earned him a swag of Best Actor awards. McGregor recalls those early days in his career with great fondness. “I didn’t really have any sense of what Shallow Grave was going to be until I saw the first previews, he says. “Then I realised it was something new and I was thrilled to be involved with it. When we went on to do Trainspotting there was a sense that people were waiting to see what we did next. There was a real anticipation about it. It was an incredible novel, John Hodge did a great job adapting it, and of course Danny is the best director. And as we shot it I had this taste that it was going to be really good. It was a really exciting time of my life.”

Now, nudging his fortieth birthday and with more than fifty film credits to his name, McGregor has become increasingly interested in working with the industry’s most experienced directors. “I wanted to work with Woody Allen, and I put the feelers out and made that happen,” he says about his experience working on Allen’s Cassandra’s Crossing back in 2007. “I had never let the director factor influence my decision to take a role in the past, but I’ve learned over the last three or four years that I get more out of people who really know what they are doing - I get more out of directors who know how to push you.”

Working with Roman Polanski usually involves more than a push or two. The Academy Award winning director of The Pianist, Tess, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby is famous for his extreme attention to detail and for being highly demanding of his cast and crew. McGregor enjoyed the challenge thoroughly. “I liked it. It’s what makes him brilliant,” he says. “I expected that I would be challenged by Roman and I really wanted to be, and it’s always the little details that make things real. He pushes you to make your performance authentic, and, yes, it’s not a holiday because he can be quite brusque sometimes. He doesn’t sugar coat his notes to you as an actor, but as long as you don’t take it personally, you can learn a great deal from him. You have to realise that his demands are all because he wants everything to be honest and real.”

Based on the best selling novel by Robert Harris, The Ghost Writer is Polanski’s first contemporary thriller in more than twenty years – and his first film in the last five years, a period of Polanski’s life marred by the continuing fall-out of the 1977 Samantha Geimer sex scandal. Shot in the USA, Germany and the UK, The Ghost Writer tells the story of a former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), who is holed up on an island off America’s Eastern seaboard in midwinter, writing his memoirs. When the man helping Lang write the book dies, a professional ghost writer (McGregor) is sent out to help finish the publication. McGregor’s character – who is never named - is quickly drawn into a world of political and sexual intrigue involving Lang’s wife, the CIA, and the threat of a war crimes trial for Lang’s role in the torture of military prisoners. As McGregor’s ghost writer digs deeper and deeper into Lang’s mysterious past he realizes he is putting his own life at risk.

McGregor was instantly drawn to the character of “the ghost, ” a laconic protagonist unperturbed by the powerful and opaque people he has to deal with. “Although there was not much in the script about his background, and not many clues as to where he’s come from, I thought it was absolutely clear who he was,” says McGregor. “All we know is that he wrote a couple of books – one about a magician and the other about a rock star, but I thought the key to him was that he was unimpressed by others. He writes books about celebrities and famous people, and yet he’s unimpressed with fame and people like politicians. I thought that was nice to play with, and it gave me a lot of scope to become a guy who adopts these peoples voices, but who’s not bothered about them or his career. And as a ghost writer he doesn’t even put his name to his words, which implies a sort of failure.”

There’s no sign of failure in McGregor’s near future. He’s already completed five films since The Ghost Writer finished shooting, and has been cast alongside Robert Duvall in Terry Gilliam’s second attempt at his infamous Don Quixote movie. After that McGregor’s appearing with Emily Blunt and Kristin Scott Thomas in a Lasse Hallstrom drama about a fisheries scientist, then a thriller about the Boxing Day Tsunami with Naomi Watts, and – if that wasn’t enough variety - a wacky comedy about an actor playing Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1930’s. He is unquestionably one of the most versatile actors of his generation.

Filed Under: Interviews by Simon