| FORCE MAJEURE McGregor won't do the Hollywood shuffle because he likes what we do here [UK] too much. But he has landed the highly publicised role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the three new Star Wars movies and, though sworn to secrecy by George Lucas, he tells me about getting his first light sabre. "A man from props came up and took me into the room. There were 60 guys standing about and he came out, dead secretive, with this big wooden box with two padlocks on, and the secrecy was incredible. He unlocked it, asked me if I was ready, and inlaid in black felt there were these nine or ten light sabres handles. And I just about nearly shat myself. And I took out these precious things and chose my handle and realised how much these things were ingrown in the psyche. I grew up on them. 'Dad, I've broken me light sabre again!'." McGregor thinks the film should be okay. "Lucas has spent a lot of time on them - two years pre-production, 12 months shooting and 18 months post-production - so he's going to get it right. As directors, Danny and George are very different, because Danny's all about the acting, really cracking a scene, whereas with Lucas it's only part of what he's doing, there's all this stuff going on around you which only he knows about." McGregor learns from his directors, another being Mark Herman, with whom he worked on Brassed Off and whose adaptation of Jim Cartwright's award-winning play, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, opens this year's London Film Festival and co-stars Jane Horrocks, Brenda Blethyn and Micheal Caine. "I want to direct. In fact, I'm doing one of these Tube Tales shorts for Richard Jobson's company that Sky TV have commissioned." He's also producing his own project, Nora, to be filmed in Dublin and Trieste in March, in which he plays the great Irish writer James Joyce in a script written and directed by Pat Murphy. It's not about Joyce the genius - just as well, seeing as Ewan still hasn't managed to finish Ulysses - but about his long-term relationship with Nora Barnacle, played by Susan Lynch. So his crew should remember these lines well: "So often I'm surrounded by a crew who are absolutely shattered. Working 17 hours a day, driving two hours to get the set ready for us to start, then we work 14 hours and they have two hours' break and have to start again. Everyone's on deals: they get three grand extra and they've done £10,000 worth of fucking overtime. And they put me up on screen. They support me through things like the stuff in Velvet Goldmine which is very emotionally dangerous. Producers say to me, 'Well, we have to underpay them so we can pay you' and I say, 'No, no, no, no, no. If you go to buy a car and you haven't got enough money, then you don't get the car.' Know wot I mean, guv?" Of his sex appeal he claims to be largely ignorant. "I love working with beautiful women, but they all know I'm a married man. It's just part of the job, DAAAAHLING!!!! It's just ACTING, DEAR BOY!!! I'm a very lucky man, I have a beautiful wife, and a beautiful child, and fantastic, wonderful parents and I love my job. In fact I'm Mr Fucking Lucky." Before he goes, McGregor signs two autographs. One is for my daughter, who's a big fan of Trainspotting, the film which has already ensured that like Caine's Alfie, De Niro's Taxi Driver, or Dean's Rebel Without A Cause, McGregor's Mark Renton will go down in history as an authentic movie icon. And then another for my son, who's a Star Wars buff. He signs one 'All the best, daaahling!' and the other 'Och the Force Be With You'. Then he pats me on the back and exits. As I say, he's a good bloke that Ewan McGregor. He really is. |