Scotland’s finest filmmakers Kevin Macdonald ●
Ewan McGregor Actor wan McGregor is probably the most popular Scottish actor working in film this decade. He’s been The List’s cover star, appearing on its cover six times in its 17 year existance. His most recent appearance was timed with the release of Young Adam, in which the lad from Crieff plays existential drifter Joe. McGregor first appeared on the cover of The List when Dennis Potter’s musical drama Lipstick on Your Collar – his big break – was televised in 1993. In between he’s appeared on the front of the mag dressed as a Jedi Knight for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and with half his face lopped off the bottom of the page at a time when he had two other blockbuster films flooding the multiplexes: Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. Those covers illustrate a career that’s as varied as it is prolific. It began when McGregor’s parents encouraged the then 16-year-old to leave school for the Perth Repertory Theatre. With their support and inspired by his uncle, the actor Denis Lawson, McGregor continued his studies in Fife and then at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He quit the latter just before graduating, for a part in Lipstick on Your Collar
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and hasn’t looked back since. His early film appearances were generally in indie and arthouse films – Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book and Velvet Goldmine. In fact, the actor resisted the call of Hollywood for some time, until George Lucas offered him the part of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first of the second Star Wars trilogy. He was six years old when the first film was released; how could the big kid say no to Lucas? Since then, McGregor’s gone from strength to strength, and though he’s got over his aversion to blockbusters, he still punctuates them with more interesting film roles: as Nick Leeson in Rogue Trader, as James Joyce in Nora (produced by his own company, Natural Nylon) and as the aforementioned Joe in Young Adam (one of his best performances to date). If you want irrefutable proof that McGregor’s a bonafide celebrity and movie star then consider his heroin chic look from Trainspotting – shaved head, tight T-shirt over a scrawny frame – is as iconic a piece of film imagery as Jack Nicholson leering through a broken door in The Shining. That shaved head, together with his distinctive mole, made him instantly recognisable on The List despite having only half a head. (MF)
The 50 Best Scottish Films of all Time THE LIST 41