Scottish-born actor Ewan McGregor started his career in British TV in 1993, but by 1994, he was already making his name in striking films, particularly the back-to-back Danny Boyle style-fests Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. He’s gone on to a long run of idiosyncratic, sometimes oddball film projects (Velvet Goldmine, Big Fish, Moulin Rouge! and many more) alternated with big studio projects like Black Hawk Down, The Island, and George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, in which McGregor plays the young Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ambitious cinemagoers can currently see McGregor in four movies now in theaters; the most recent is the book-to-film adaptation Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, the latest from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and The Cider House Rules director Lasse Hallström. McGregor plays a stuffy, repressed British government scientist dragged by consultant Emily Blunt into a sheikh’s strange vanity/visionary project to stock Yemen with salmon so the locals can try fly-fishing. The A.V. Club recently spoke to McGregor about his ongoing efforts to try new roles, the trials of a Star Wars film, and his desire to direct, once he has a story in mind.
The A.V. Club: In an interview for Salmon Fishing In The Yemen before the Toronto International Film Festival, you said you’re constantly looking for something in a character you haven’t played before. What about Fred in Salmon Fishing was new for you?
Ewan McGregor: I just felt that he’s a very repressed—emotionally, sexually—and unhappy man at the beginning of the film, and I didn’t feel like I’d really explored that before, y’know? And I think he’s got a very great arc. He’s got a fantastic journey through the film. And by the time you get to the end of the film, he’s a very different man than he was at the beginning. That’s always very satisfying to play, ’cause you’re charting that as you go. You’re shooting everything out of sequence, but you’re trying to chart this coming to life. I just felt like there was something kind of reborn about him. Not in a religious way, but in a spiritual way, I suppose. He becomes a believer in the possibility of change, and as that happens, as he sort of opens up, he allows love into his life for the first time. I just loved his marriage. I thought it was so terrible. [Laughs.] I loved playing it, and playing with Emily [Blunt]. She’s such a fantastic actress and a great girl. Lovely; great fun. We had such a laugh.
AVC: When you’re shooting out of sequence on a character who changes so dramatically from the beginning of the film to the end, even down to his body language and his speech patterns, how do you personally keep track of where you are in the progression?
EM: In a way, it’s in the script, it’s in the writing. But also, as you come to each scene, you just have to keep your eye on it, really. You make decisions beforehand, I suppose, about where you would like it to go, but it’s not until you actually start playing the scenes that you figure out how you’re gonna do it. I don’t know, I just don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. But you have in your mind what you want to achieve and, I guess, when you come to shoot the scenes, that’s what’s coming out.
AVC: Salmon Fishing doesn’t much cover Fred’s relationship and history with his wife. When you’re building characters, do you tend to come up with backstories in your head?
EM: Yeah, we did. We did it together. There’s more explanation of that in the book. And indeed, there may have been more in the film. I know they did some more editing since I’ve seen the film, so maybe some of that is gone, I don’t know. But the idea [was] that they’re both career-driven people, and they probably met at university and were both… We imagined that she proposed to him—or, no, she just said, “We should get married.” I think that’s in the book, that she says, “We should get married, Fred,” and he’s so incapable of knowing how to deal with women that he just says “Okay.” And so they get married. But we did a lot of talking about it, yeah.
AVC: When you’re looking for something you haven’t done before, how much do you distinguish between something that can only be found in the character vs. the opportunity to do something like travel to Morocco for this film, or fight hand-to-hand in Haywire?
EM: Well, it’s all wrapped up. There’s many different factors in films. The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything. And if you don’t connect to that foundation, if you don’t believe in that and feel that you wanna spend three, four months of your life exploring it, then all of the other elements are secondary. But if you’ve got a great foundation in the script, and you like the story… Sometimes it’s the story, sometimes it’s the atmosphere in the script, the world that you’re gonna create. There’s many different things that hook you in, and then, on top of that, you have who’s directing, who are the other actors, who’s lighting—those creative elements that come in. Everyone’s tied to the script. I think the script is the key. Regardless of how great everybody else is working on a film, if you’re working on a script that you don’t think is great, you’re not gonna be able to make a great film. Whereas if the script is great, then you can.
