SquidgeWorld Archive

Ewan McGregor has switched with ease from playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in the big-budget Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, to his portrayal of James Joyce in Pat Murphy's new film, Nora, which is currently filming in Trieste. He talks to Micheal Dwyer about taking on the role of the artist as a young - and older - man

Next Thursday night, while the audience at the Irish première of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace are watching Ewan McGregor playing the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ewan McGregor will be in Trieste, playing the young James Joyce in Nora, which finishes filming there next Saturday. Spanning eight years from 1904, Nora takes Joyce through his 20s and the early stages of his often volatile relationship with Nora Barnacle, the young Galway woman he met when she was working as a chambermaid at Finn's Hotel on Nassau Street in Dublin.

Directed by Pat Murphy, who made Maeve and Anne Devlin, Nora has been adapted for the screen by Murphy and Gerry Stembridge from the biography of Nora Barnacle by Brenda Maddox. Nora is played by Susan Lynch, the young Irish actress whose undemanding movie roles in Waking Ned and The Secret of Roan Inish did not scratch the surface of the ability and intensity she displayed in a vintage episode of Cracker.

Her prolific and versatile co-star in Nora, Ewan McGregor moves with complete ease between mega-projects such as Star Wars and smaller, more intimate projects such as Little Voice and Nora. "It's just my job," he said when we met one night on the set of Nora in Dublin. "I'm in the most fortunate position in the world now as an actor to do what I want to do. So if I want to stick with something I like, I can wait for as long as it takes for it to happen. That's the best feeling in the world.

"For me, I don't think there's one area of film-making that's the top. I don't think Hollywood movies are the best movies in the world. I'm committed to doing the next two Star Wars movies, and I want to be in films like Star Wars because they allow me the opportunity to do anything I want for the rest of my life, which is incredible."

Laughing, he tells a story against himself. "It's funny," he says. "When we were shooting a scene a few days ago there was an extra sitting behind Susan and the extra pointed at me and went, `Ooh, it's a bit of a step down from Star Wars for him, isn't it?' That made me laugh an awful lot. That attitude isn't something that I have. This movie is like a work of passion for me."

We talk while sitting on fold-up chairs by the banks of the canal near Mount Street Bridge in Dublin on a balmy Saturday night. Ewan McGregor is looking handsome in his striking period costume and wearing little gold-rimmed glasses. Bemused passers-by gather on the nearby Huband Bridge, wondering what's going on with all the lights in position, technicians bustling around, and extras in period costume walking up and down the canal. The cast are rehearsing a scene in which Joyce is waiting to meet Nora.

While the scene is set up, writer-director Pat Murphy takes time out to talk about this project which she has striven to make since she acquired the movie rights to the Brenda Maddox book eight years ago. "On film I don't think you can ever do what Joyce did," she says. "So making this film is a way of looking at his work, looking at his themes, but not actually trying to replicate what he did, which I don't think anyone can do.

"So many of the themes find their core in the events we are covering in the film - his love for Nora, his paranoia, his feeling that he would never be published, his fear that Nora might leave or be with someone else, and his writing, which is about celebrating their relationship.

"What the film is about for me is what happens when people fall in love. The series of mistakes they make. How, when you're with someone and you think you know them, and they change and then you have to change. It's about how two people who seem to be totally incompatible have this extraordinary relationship.

"I think so many people know that feeling, which is really interesting, because people should be able to see this movie and not be obsessed with Joyce - and relate to it on a very core level as this love story - though people who know about Joyce have an extra way in."

Pat Murphy admires the tenacity witolder - man

Next Thursday night, while the audience at the Irish première of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace are watching Ewan McGregor playing the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ewan McGregor will be in Trieste, playing the young James Joyce in Nora, which finishes filming there next Saturday. Spanning eight years from 1904, Nora takes Joyce through his 20s and the early stages of his often volatile relationship with Nora Barnacle, the young Galway woman he met when she was working as a chambermaid at Finn's Hotel on Nassau Street in Dublin.

Directed by Pat Murphy, who made Maeve and Anne Devlin, Nora has been adapted for the screen by Murphy and Gerry Stembridge from the biography of Nora Barnacle by Brenda Maddox. Nora is played by Susan Lynch, the young Irish actress whose undemanding movie roles in Waking Ned and The Secret of Roan Inish did not scratch the surface of the ability and intensity she displayed in a vintage episode of Cracker.

Her prolific and versatile co-star in Nora, Ewan McGregor moves with complete ease between mega-projects such as Star Wars and smaller, more intimate projects such as Little Voice and Nora. "It's just my job," he said when we met one night on the set of Nora in Dublin. "I'm in the most fortunate position in the world now as an actor to do what I want to do. So if I want to stick with something I like, I can wait for as long as it takes for it to happen. That's the best feeling in the world.

"For me, I don't think there's one area of film-making that's the top. I don't think Hollywood movies are the best movies in the world. I'm committed to doing the next two Star Wars movies, and I want to be in films like Star Wars because they allow me the opportunity to do anything I want for the rest of my life, which is incredible."

Laughing, he tells a story against himself. "It's funny," he says. "When we were shooting a scene a few days ago there was an extra sitting behind Susan and the extra pointed at me and went, `Ooh, it's a bit of a step down from Star Wars for him, isn't it?' That made me laugh an awful lot. That attitude isn't something that I have. This movie is like a work of passion for me."

We talk while sitting on fold-up chairs by the banks of the canal near Mount Street Bridge in Dublin on a balmy Saturday night. Ewan McGregor is looking handsome in his striking period costume and wearing little gold-rimmed glasses. Bemused passers-by gather on the nearby Huband Bridge, wondering what's going on with all the lights in position, technicians bustling around, and extras in period costume walking up and down the canal. The cast are rehearsing a scene in which Joyce is waiting to meet Nora.

While the scene is set up, writer-director Pat Murphy takes time out to talk about this project which she has striven to make since she acquired the movie rights to the Brenda Maddox book eight years ago. "On film I don't think you can ever do what Joyce did," she says. "So making this film is a way of looking at his work, looking at his themes, but not actually trying to replicate what he did, which I don't think anyone can do.

"So many of the themes find their core in the events we are covering in the film - his love for Nora, his paranoia, his feeling that he would never be published, his fear that Nora might leave or be with someone else, and his writing, which is about celebrating their relationship.

"What the film is about for me is what happens when people fall in love. The series of mistakes they make. How, when you're with someone and you think you know them, and they change and then you have to change. It's about how two people who seem to be totally incompatible have this extraordinary relationship.

"I think so many people know that feeling, which is really interesting, because people should be able to see this movie and not be obsessed with Joyce - and relate to it on a very core level as this love story - though people who know about Joyce have an extra way in."

Pat Murphy admires the tenacity with which Ewan McGregor remained attached for so long. "I think the reason the film is happening is because of him, because he stuck with it for all this time," she says. "He's been attached to it since about 1996. I sent him the script and he really liked it. He came to Dublin and did a reading with Susan, and once they had read together, they seemed just so perfect. I saw how it could be. That was part of the reason I stuck with it, because I could see how great this film could be with these people playing these parts. I'm just really lucky that both of them wanted to do it and that they held it together this length of time. It's great."

Sitting and smoking cigarettes by the canal, McGregor describes playing James Joyce as "a headful". He adds, "It's good, though, very interesting to do. I just loved the script so much. I thought it was fantastic. At the time Pat sent it to me I didn't know anything about James Joyce at all, and Pat thought that was good. I've read a lot since then. Ulysses I've done in chunks. But to play the part, it was important for me to read what people had written about him, and the more I read about him the more access I had to his work. I really get his stuff now.

"His language really jumps out at me. Sometimes I'll hit a sentence that I'll read over and over again, maybe five or six times before I move on, because I can't believe how beautiful the order of the words is and how expressive he makes those seven or eight words. As a writer, his work is so beautiful."

And there is a certain resemblance there to Joyce, too. "I've worked mostly from photographs of him," he says, "and I've looked at little snippets of film that were shot of him. The photographs are very telling, I think. Actually, this early section of the film is where I look least like him. When I'm in Trieste with the moustache and the hair slicked back, I'll look much more like him."

Ewan McGregor sees James Joyce as being "like a two-sided coin - he was insecure in that he felt kind of crushed by Ireland and the way people were, to the point where he had to get out. If there wasn't something to worry about, he would manufacture something to worry about. But at the same time he was absolutely confident in himself and his writing - to the point of great arrogance, in the way that great geniuses are. I like that."

Biopics of great writers and their romantic relationships are not regarded as guaranteed box-office hits - although that may have changed after the international success of Shakespeare in Love - and getting the finance together for Nora was a long, uphill battle.

"I just wouldn't leave it alone," McGregor says. "I've been so passionate about it for so long. Then, the first day we were shooting it, we were down there on the train station and it was the most moving experience after all this length of time."

Nora also marks his first film as a producer. He is credited as a co-producer on the film, and one of the production companies involved in making the film is Natural Nylon, which McGregor set up with his fellow actors, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee, and producers Bradley Adams and Damon Bryant. Natural Nylon's projects biopics of Beatles manager Brian Epstein and playwright Christopher Marlowe and a film about the orgiastic Hellfire Club.

"Being involved with producing the film, I also feel very responsible for it," McGregor says of his dual association with Nora. "I've never had this much input into a movie before, and it's very much a labour of love. It's all just fantastic. For me, it's a real learning process in the way other films haven't been. Anything can happen. Film-making is full of ups and downs. We all know that, so you learn from that. I'm chuffed. It's a great start for our company. I'm really proud for Pat, too, because she's been working on this for eight years."

Given that every biopic is now subjected to the most minute examination to test historical accuracy, how does Ewan McGregor expect the legions of James Joyce purists to react to the fih which Ewan McGregor remained attached for so long. "I think the reason the film is happening is because of him, because he stuck with it for all this time," she says. "He's been attached to it since about 1996. I sent him the script and he really liked it. He came to Dublin and did a reading with Susan, and once they had read together, they seemed just so perfect. I saw how it could be. That was part of the reason I stuck with it, because I could see how great this film could be with these people playing these parts. I'm just really lucky that both of them wanted to do it and that they held it together this length of time. It's great."

Sitting and smoking cigarettes by the canal, McGregor describes playing James Joyce as "a headful". He adds, "It's good, though, very interesting to do. I just loved the script so much. I thought it was fantastic. At the time Pat sent it to me I didn't know anything about James Joyce at all, and Pat thought that was good. I've read a lot since then. Ulysses I've done in chunks. But to play the part, it was important for me to read what people had written about him, and the more I read about him the more access I had to his work. I really get his stuff now.

"His language really jumps out at me. Sometimes I'll hit a sentence that I'll read over and over again, maybe five or six times before I move on, because I can't believe how beautiful the order of the words is and how expressive he makes those seven or eight words. As a writer, his work is so beautiful."

And there is a certain resemblance there to Joyce, too. "I've worked mostly from photographs of him," he says, "and I've looked at little snippets of film that were shot of him. The photographs are very telling, I think. Actually, this early section of the film is where I look least like him. When I'm in Trieste with the moustache and the hair slicked back, I'll look much more like him."

Ewan McGregor sees James Joyce as being "like a two-sided coin - he was insecure in that he felt kind of crushed by Ireland and the way people were, to the point where he had to get out. If there wasn't something to worry about, he would manufacture something to worry about. But at the same time he was absolutely confident in himself and his writing - to the point of great arrogance, in the way that great geniuses are. I like that."

Biopics of great writers and their romantic relationships are not regarded as guaranteed box-office hits - although that may have changed after the international success of Shakespeare in Love - and getting the finance together for Nora was a long, uphill battle.

"I just wouldn't leave it alone," McGregor says. "I've been so passionate about it for so long. Then, the first day we were shooting it, we were down there on the train station and it was the most moving experience after all this length of time."

Nora also marks his first film as a producer. He is credited as a co-producer on the film, and one of the production companies involved in making the film is Natural Nylon, which McGregor set up with his fellow actors, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee, and producers Bradley Adams and Damon Bryant. Natural Nylon's projects biopics of Beatles manager Brian Epstein and playwright Christopher Marlowe and a film about the orgiastic Hellfire Club.

"Being involved with producing the film, I also feel very responsible for it," McGregor says of his dual association with Nora. "I've never had this much input into a movie before, and it's very much a labour of love. It's all just fantastic. For me, it's a real learning process in the way other films haven't been. Anything can happen. Film-making is full of ups and downs. We all know that, so you learn from that. I'm chuffed. It's a great start for our company. I'm really proud for Pat, too, because she's been working on this for eight years."

Given that every biopic is now subjected to the most minute examination to test historical accuracy, how does Ewan McGregor expect the legions of James Joyce purists to react to the film? "I just don't know," he says with a shrug of his shoulders. "I don't even know what people feel about him in this country. Of course, anyone who spends so much time on the same subject is sure to know much more about him. But I think it should be fine for them, too. It's based on what he wrote and the knowledge we have of what he was like and how he lived his life. It's Pat Murphy's representation of what she thinks he was like, and I've never met anyone who knows as much about him as she does. And if they don't like it, they can go off and make another one."

One of the most satisfying aspects of filming Nora, he says, has been working with his co-star, Susan Lynch. "She's brilliant," he says. "An amazing, amazing actress. An actress in the real sense of the word - not like some people who pretend to be actresses. She's wonderful to work with."

Ewan McGregor dates his own interest in acting back to when he was "about nine" and growing up in the small Scottish spa town of Crieff in Pertshire. His inspiration was his uncle, Denis Lawson, a stage and film actor who had a leading role in Local Hero - and, by coincidence, played the fighter pilot, Wedge, in the first three Star Wars films. "He always seemed very different to the other people I was surrounded by and at that age I wanted to be different, like him. So I decided to be an actor and I wouldn't let anyone sway me."

Having seen the first Star Wars when he was six, McGregor now has one of the starring roles in the prequel trilogy which begins with Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. He plays Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was played as an older man by Alec Guinness in the first series and who, as the new film begins, is the apprentice of the Jedi Master, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson).

McGregor's dashing screen presence helps enliven the uneven, sometimes ponderously paced Phantom Menace. In his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi, he sounds appropriately refined, given that that character already has been immortalised with such gravitas by Alec Guinness. "I've never met him and I just tried to get the flavour of him," says McGregor. "I watched a lot of his earlier movies, but at no point did I see the role as any kind of impersonation of him."

He sees the Star Wars series as "essentially a fairy tale about good versus evil" and he says that while he's looking forward to working on the next two movies in the series, he has no intention of restricting himself to Hollywood fare. "If you were to go over to Hollywood," he says, "and get stuck doing the same thing, doing big-budget American movies, you would never learn anything any more. I know how to do that now." Now 28, Ewan McGregor continues to be one of the busiest actors in the world. Already this year he enjoyed considerable acclaim for his London stage performance as a naive student revolutionary in David Halliwell's play, Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs. He takes the role of the reckless Barings Bank trader, Nick Leeson, in Rogue Trader, which was released here a week before Leeson was released from a Singapore jail last weekend.

McGregor plays a surveillance agent in Eye of the Beholder, a thriller from Stephan Elliott, the Australian director of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The film, which opens here towards the end of the year, also features Ashley Judd, Jason Priestley and Patrick Bergin. McGregor's next project, Moulin Rouge, a musical to co-star Nicole Kidman, will be directed by another Australian filmmaker, Baz Luhrmann, who made Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet.

"He's mad, but he's a lovely man," he says of Luhrmann. "He's one of those film-makers any actor in the world would want to work with, isn't he? And it has also got singing and dancing in it, and that's something that's been a strand in my work since I started with Lip- stick On Your Collar. I've always been into music more than anything else, so it's a very natural thing for me to do."

Not content with diversifying by turning co-producer on Nora, McGregor recently made his début as a director with onelm? "I just don't know," he says with a shrug of his shoulders. "I don't even know what people feel about him in this country. Of course, anyone who spends so much time on the same subject is sure to know much more about him. But I think it should be fine for them, too. It's based on what he wrote and the knowledge we have of what he was like and how he lived his life. It's Pat Murphy's representation of what she thinks he was like, and I've never met anyone who knows as much about him as she does. And if they don't like it, they can go off and make another one."

One of the most satisfying aspects of filming Nora, he says, has been working with his co-star, Susan Lynch. "She's brilliant," he says. "An amazing, amazing actress. An actress in the real sense of the word - not like some people who pretend to be actresses. She's wonderful to work with."

Ewan McGregor dates his own interest in acting back to when he was "about nine" and growing up in the small Scottish spa town of Crieff in Pertshire. His inspiration was his uncle, Denis Lawson, a stage and film actor who had a leading role in Local Hero - and, by coincidence, played the fighter pilot, Wedge, in the first three Star Wars films. "He always seemed very different to the other people I was surrounded by and at that age I wanted to be different, like him. So I decided to be an actor and I wouldn't let anyone sway me."

Having seen the first Star Wars when he was six, McGregor now has one of the starring roles in the prequel trilogy which begins with Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. He plays Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was played as an older man by Alec Guinness in the first series and who, as the new film begins, is the apprentice of the Jedi Master, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson).

McGregor's dashing screen presence helps enliven the uneven, sometimes ponderously paced Phantom Menace. In his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi, he sounds appropriately refined, given that that character already has been immortalised with such gravitas by Alec Guinness. "I've never met him and I just tried to get the flavour of him," says McGregor. "I watched a lot of his earlier movies, but at no point did I see the role as any kind of impersonation of him."

He sees the Star Wars series as "essentially a fairy tale about good versus evil" and he says that while he's looking forward to working on the next two movies in the series, he has no intention of restricting himself to Hollywood fare. "If you were to go over to Hollywood," he says, "and get stuck doing the same thing, doing big-budget American movies, you would never learn anything any more. I know how to do that now." Now 28, Ewan McGregor continues to be one of the busiest actors in the world. Already this year he enjoyed considerable acclaim for his London stage performance as a naive student revolutionary in David Halliwell's play, Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs. He takes the role of the reckless Barings Bank trader, Nick Leeson, in Rogue Trader, which was released here a week before Leeson was released from a Singapore jail last weekend.

McGregor plays a surveillance agent in Eye of the Beholder, a thriller from Stephan Elliott, the Australian director of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The film, which opens here towards the end of the year, also features Ashley Judd, Jason Priestley and Patrick Bergin. McGregor's next project, Moulin Rouge, a musical to co-star Nicole Kidman, will be directed by another Australian filmmaker, Baz Luhrmann, who made Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet.

"He's mad, but he's a lovely man," he says of Luhrmann. "He's one of those film-makers any actor in the world would want to work with, isn't he? And it has also got singing and dancing in it, and that's something that's been a strand in my work since I started with Lip- stick On Your Collar. I've always been into music more than anything else, so it's a very natural thing for me to do."

Not content with diversifying by turning co-producer on Nora, McGregor recently made his début as a director with one of the nine short films in Tube Tales, all of which were filmed on the London Underground. The other directors include Bob Hoskins, Jude Law, Armando Iannucci and Amy Jenkins. McGregor's episode, Bone, features one of his Little Malcolm colleagues, Nick Tennant, as a musician who invents a fantasy world surrounding the owner of a lost travel card displayed in the window of the ticket office.

McGregor's expression turns from his enthusiasm for that project to anger at the mention of several biographies of him which have been published in the past year. "I've never read any of them," he says dismissively. "I'm sure they're crap. It's scary. They call themselves `unauthorised' and they're allowed to do that! That's terrifying.

"They say they're doing a book about me and they want to interview me, and I say no because I don't want any books written about me. I think it's ridiculous. I'm only 28 years old. And even when I say no they're allowed to go and do it anyway. Behind my back, people I was at school with selling photographs of me. I think it's embarrassing."

Ewan McGregor has never been embarrassed about frontal nudity in his movies, as he showed in The Pillow Book, Trainspotting and Velvet Goldmine, but he says he's "thoroughly fed up" with the media's obsession with this aspect of his work.

"In one interview I read recently the writer referred to 'the obligatory McGregor nude scene', and I was so offended," he says. "I thought, I'm really trying to do something with my work and it's reduced to some ignorant arsehole in a magazine saying something like that. It makes me so angry, because I'm worth much more than that. I'm trying to do something and it's not the obligatory McGregor nude scene. That's just nonsense.

"If I'm nude in a film, it's because that's what's required. I won't limit myself with anything. That would be like saying I won't walk down the pavement on the right-hand side because I don't do that. So why should I limit myself by saying I won't take my clothes off in a movie?"
of the nine short films in Tube Tales, all of which were filmed on the London Underground. The other directors include Bob Hoskins, Jude Law, Armando Iannucci and Amy Jenkins. McGregor's episode, Bone, features one of his Little Malcolm colleagues, Nick Tennant, as a musician who invents a fantasy world surrounding the owner of a lost travel card displayed in the window of the ticket office.

McGregor's expression turns from his enthusiasm for that project to anger at the mention of several biographies of him which have been published in the past year. "I've never read any of them," he says dismissively. "I'm sure they're crap. It's scary. They call themselves `unauthorised' and they're allowed to do that! That's terrifying.

"They say they're doing a book about me and they want to interview me, and I say no because I don't want any books written about me. I think it's ridiculous. I'm only 28 years old. And even when I say no they're allowed to go and do it anyway. Behind my back, people I was at school with selling photographs of me. I think it's embarrassing."

Ewan McGregor has never been embarrassed about frontal nudity in his movies, as he showed in The Pillow Book, Trainspotting and Velvet Goldmine, but he says he's "thoroughly fed up" with the media's obsession with this aspect of his work.

"In one interview I read recently the writer referred to 'the obligatory McGregor nude scene', and I was so offended," he says. "I thought, I'm really trying to do something with my work and it's reduced to some ignorant arsehole in a magazine saying something like that. It makes me so angry, because I'm worth much more than that. I'm trying to do something and it's not the obligatory McGregor nude scene. That's just nonsense.

"If I'm nude in a film, it's because that's what's required. I won't limit myself with anything. That would be like saying I won't walk down the pavement on the right-hand side because I don't do that. So why should I limit myself by saying I won't take my clothes off in a movie?"