Ewan McGregor

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Ewan McGregor at the 65th Cannes Film Festival (2012)

Ewan Gordon McGregor OBE [ ˌjuːən məˈɡɹɛɡɚ ] (born March  31, 1971 in Perth, Scotland ) is a Scottish actor , singer and director .

life and career

After finishing school, at the age of 19, he attended a one-week workshop at a theater school in Hamburg . There he played as an actor in Shakespeare's play As You Like It .

He worked at the Perth Repertory Theater and later continued his education at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama . Shortly before graduation, he dropped out of school in order to Dennis Potter television series Lipstick on Your Collar (Lipstick on your collar) participate. Further television appearances followed, and in 1993 the actor first appeared on the big screen in the film Being Human .

In 1994, McGregor worked for the first time with the director Danny Boyle on the film Little Murders Among Friends , with which he later also realized Trainspotting - New Heroes . Then he devoted himself to the wave rider film Against the Surf .

McGregor's breakthrough as an actor came with the film adaptation of the novel Trainspotting , in which he played the junkie Renton from a suburb of Edinburgh. Without make-up, the film shows the events around a Scottish clique and their heroin consumption. To play emaciated heroin junkie, Ewan had lost 15 kg. After that he played repeatedly in films that were not part of the Hollywood blockbusters, for example the thriller remake Freeze - Nightmare Night Watch or Better Live Unusual .

A wider audience saw McGregor in his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace . He also played this role in the subsequent episodes Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith . In the seventh part of the series The Awakening of the Force and in the ninth part The Rise of Skywalker he has a short speaking role as Kenobi.

In addition to working on this George Lucas project , he was in the award-winning films Moulin Rouge! , Big Fish and Black Hawk Down to see. In the film adaptation of the musical Moulin Rouge - as in other films before - he demonstrated his musical talent. McGregor was now a member of Natural NyLon , a company he founded with acting friends like Jude Law and Sean Pertwee . He produced his own film with Nora - James Joyce's Passionate Love . After the love comedy Down with Love - To hell with love! , which received little attention in Germany, he also tried his hand at dubbing. Despite the success, he shot the independent film Young Adam after many larger projects in Scotland , which brought him even greater recognition worldwide. In the animated film Robots he spoke the voice of Rodney Copperbottom in the English original , and in Valiant the pigeon of the same name.

In April 2004, he set off from London on a motorcycle tour that was to take him to New York with his friend and fellow actor Charley Boorman (he had met him while filming The Serpent's Kiss ). The result was a long journey - the Long Way Round - across Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Alaska, Canada and the USA, which meant the realization of a childhood dream for both of them.

The resulting television series as well as the book and the DVDs published in 2005 were very successful internationally. A second tour, which the same team undertook from May 12 to August 5, 2007 and which led from John o 'Groats in Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa , was named Long Way Down .

Ewan McGregor at the premiere of Stormbreaker in London in July 2006

Together with Scarlett Johansson, he worked in the blockbuster production Die Insel by Michael Bay . In the same year he could be seen in Marc Forster's Stay as a psychiatrist or doctor on the side of Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling . In spring 2006 he shot the film Miss Potter with Renée Zellweger in London , in which he played Norman Warne. In the fall of the same year he stood with Colin Farrell and Hayley Atwell in front of the camera in Woody Allen's film Cassandra's Dream , which was released the following year. In the drama, McGregor and Farrell play two brothers from the London working class who drift into crime. From May 20 to December 3, 2005 McGregor appeared as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls on the stage of London's Piccadilly Theater; For this he won the important “What's On Stage” award and was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award .

The director of the Bond film Casino Royale , Martin Campbell, confirmed in the Daily Mirror newspaper that Ewan McGregor was originally slated for the role of James Bond . However, he refused because he did not want to be committed to one character.

From November 30, 2007 to February 23, 2008, McGregor played the role of Iago in the production of Othello at the Donmar Warehouse in London, while Othello was played by Chiwetel Ejiofor . In 2009 he played alongside Tom Hanks and Armin Mueller-Stahl in the Ron Howard film Illuminati . He took on the second leading role of Camerlengo "Patrick McKenna" (in the novel "Carlo Ventresca"). A year later, the title role in Roman Polański's thriller The Ghostwriter earned him the European Film Prize . In 2012 he was a member of the competition jury at the 65th Cannes International Film Festival .

In 2016, McGregor made his directorial debut with the film adaptation of Philip Roth's novel American Idyll . In 2017, McGregor took on the role of Mark Renton again in T2 Trainspotting , the sequel to Trainspotting - New Heroes (1996).

McGregor is a UNICEF ambassador. In a two-part documentary made by the BBC in 2012, he accompanied vaccines by motorcycle, boat, plane and on foot that were brought to children in remote parts of India, Nepal and the Republic of the Congo as part of the UNICEF Cold Chain Mission .

McGregor was married to Eve Mavrakis from 1995 to 2017 and has four children, two of whom are adopted.

Trivia

  • Before Ewan McGregor got his first roles, he shared an apartment in London with the then unknown Jude Law and Jonny Lee Miller .
  • His uncle Denis Lawson played the role of the X-Wing pilot Wedge Antilles in Star Wars episodes IV through VI and IX . When McGregor was offered the role of young Obi-Wan, Lawson is said to have advised him to decline, McGregor said in an interview with Playboy .
  • McGregor's German voice actor is the actor Philipp Moog .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Ewan McGregor has won 28 film awards to date and has been nominated for 47 more.

  • 2018 Golden Camera in the Best International Actor category
  • 2018 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie for Fargo
  • 2010 European Film Award for The Ghost Writer
  • 2001 European film award for Moulin Rouge!

Discography

Singles

year Title
album 		Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1997 Choose Life
Trainspotting # 2 (OST) 		- - - UK6 (11 weeks)
UK 		-
First published: October 7, 1997
with The PF Project
2001 Come What May
Moulin Rouge (OST) 		DE95 (2 weeks)
DE 		- CH97 (2 weeks)
CH 		UK27 (6 weeks)
UK 		-
First published: September 24, 2001
with Nicole Kidman
  • In 1997 the PF Project, consisting of the two musicians Jamie White and Moose, released a single CD entitled Choose Life , on which Ewan McGregor recited his famous opening monologue from Trainspotting - New Heroes . This track is also included on the compilation album Trainspotting 2 .
  • In 1998, McGregor sang the song TV Eye for the film Velvet Goldmine together with the fictional film band Wylde Ratttz , which can also be heard on the soundtrack.
  • In 2000 he sang the traditional song The Lass of Aughrim , which is included on the soundtrack, for the biographical film about James Joyce, Nora , together with Susan Lynch .
  • 2001 Ewan McGregor starred in the film Moulin Rouge and heard; he sang the following songs on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack :
Your Song (Original by Elton John , together with Alessandro Safina )
Elephant Love Medley (with Nicole Kidman and Jamie Allen)
Come What May (with Nicole Kidman )
El Tango de Roxanne (together with José Feliciano and Jacek Koman )

Audio books

Web links

Commons : Ewan McGregor  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Warner: Press Booklet Jack and the Giants , 2013, p. 27: "McGregor comes from Perth, Scotland."
  2. ↑ // Golden camera: Star crowd in Hamburg
  3. ↑ Ewan McGregor and wife Eve Mavrakis adopt a little girl English , accessed July 1, 2011
  4. ↑ Chart sources: DE CH UK
personal data
SURNAME McGregor, Ewan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McGregor, Ewan Gordon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actor, singer and director
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH Perth , Perthshire, Scotland