From The Daily Mail
Quote:
| 'At first I thought it was a joke,' he says. 'Roman was in a studio in Paris and we were talking to each other and he was on good form. The next day I got a text from the producer saying he'd been arrested. I really did think he was kidding. I felt sad for Roman, because he's an old man who I'm incredibly fond of. I also felt bad for his kids that their dad had been locked up for 23 hours a day. It's an awful trauma for them.' 'In terms of the actual case,' McGregor says, 'it doesn't matter what I think, and I don't believe I'm accountable for it. I don't think that by working with him as a director I'm condoning what happened 30 years ago.' 'A lot of scenes rang true with Roman's situation,' McGregor says. 'There's a scene where Lang is asking "Where can I go?" when he knows he could end up in The Hague to stand trial. He goes through a list of possibilities, because he could be extradited from certain countries. And when we were shooting, we were all aware that this is Roman's situation. He can go to this country but not that one, or that one. And although we didn't talk to him about it, and Robert wrote the part before he knew Roman was going to direct, it does ring quite loud that it's a reference to his own life. And since he's been arrested it's amplified. So it's an odd piece in that way.' 'I just find myself completely uninterested in politicians. I can't read about them. I can't open a newspaper to a page that's about politics. I don't care. I've never been interested in politics. I'm interested in how the world works to a certain extent, and I've certainly got opinions about things that are right and wrong, but I don't believe in politics and politicians. It just seems to be a game to me. 'People are dead, there's blood on the streets, and is anyone accountable? I was pleased that Blair had to sit down and answer for his decisions. And saddened Bush never will. Bush has retired to the golf course. I cannot stomach that. It's not right. Blair hasn't said sorry or, by all accounts, made any comment to the kids who lost their arms and legs and eyes. Probably thousands of kids - and he hasn't ever visited them. I don't know how you live with yourself, really. But then he ended up doing after-dinner speaking, which is hell in itself, so it's fair play really,' he laughs. The actor says he will vote 'because I think it's a responsible thing to do. But what happened with Blair? Didn't we have such high hopes? All those years where I'd only ever known Tory-dom, and then... nothing really changed, did it? Silly things changed, like parking and the congestion charge, but nothing that made a difference. You get elected and you immediately start trading off your ideals for votes.' McGregor met Blair a few years ago, in his role as a Unicef ambassador at a charity event organised by Robbie Williams. He slips into a passable Blair voice and holds his hand out. '"Hello, nice to meet you..." And someone behind him was whispering, "Ewan McGregor." 'There was a veneer of remembering what his aide had told him three minutes before about who everyone was, just ticking through the pieces of information he'd been fed. I sympathise to an extent, because it must be a nightmare. I felt the same when I met Prince Charles once. It was at the premiere for Moulin Rouge and I was standing next to Nicole (Kidman). He came down the line and got to me - and I'd been making British movies for probably eight years at this point - and he said, "And what did you do on the film?"' McGregor bursts out laughing. 'I pointed to Nicole and said, "I played her boyfriend." I think he just wanted to get on to Nicole, really.' We're chatting in the library of the Soho Hotel, where McGregor is staying overnight. He's dressed in dark blue jeans with black boots and a big, navy blue turtle-neck sweater. His light blond hair is cut in a trendily choppy style, and he's lean and clearly in good shape. He's relaxed and affable and answers questions easily, even when we touch on potentially tricky subjects. McGregor was once a party animal who enjoyed all that London's nightlife had to offer. He clearly felt it was getting out of hand, and hasn't touched alcohol for years. 'This November it'll be ten years since I gave up, and I don't really miss it.' He pauses, running a hand through his hair. 'Actually, occasionally I do. There are times when I think about it, but I always know that when I'm thinking about it there's something wrong. The problem isn't that I want a drink; it's that for me - as it is for a lot of other people - drink was a way to dull the pain of something else. For people who drink a lot it's a way of not dealing with emotions and feelings.' What was he avoiding? 'I think it was growing up. It's hard to say without making it sound dramatic, which it isn't. I was just somebody who always liked to drink a lot. So now when I think about drinking I ask myself, OK, what is it? It's not really that you're thirsty for a beer, because you haven't had a beer for ten years. It's often something else that's bothering me.' McGregor, 38, grew up in Crieff, Perthshire and his parents, Carol and James, are both teachers. For the last 15 years he has been happily married to French production designer Eve Mavrakis, and they have three daughters. He has an older brother, Colin, an ex-RAF fighter pilot who served in Iraq. The brothers are close, although they disagreed over the British Government's decision to go to war in the Gulf. McGregor swells with pride when he describes how his brother took him for a ride in a Tornado jet. 'We went barrelling down the runway and I was in the seat directly behind him, and because you can't see what's coming you can't prepare for the G-force. You're wearing a G-suit that inflates and pushes on your body, and it pushes the blood back. Without it you'd just pass out, as the G-force is unbelievable. It's horrible. 'I was a little sick, but not too much. We did a lot of low-level stuff and then he went up to 2,000ft, over the clouds, and I started to sweat and I was thinking, "Conquer it, conquer it!" I managed to be all right, but then he asked me to change the frequency on the radio, and as I put my head down he veered off. I couldn't get my head back up, and it's horrible when you can't see. I instantly threw up. When you land, you've got your little bag of sick on your lap, and the canopy comes up and the ground-crew fella comes up the ladder and he says, "OK?" And you have to hand him the bag.' As for the future, there may be another epic motorbike ride with Charley Boorman at some point, but for now he's focusing on films. |
