GQ's cover star Ewan McGregor on fame, being scared of Darth Vader and his old obsession with Oasis

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16 Jun 2022, 09:42

The acting royalty is the face of GQ this month and has opened up about his fame evolution, fan-boying the album There and Then in the 90s and being blown away by Star Wars as a child.

He told GQ about going to the cinema when he was six with his brother to see Star Wars because their uncle, Denis Lawson, was playing the rebel pilot Wedge Antilles. He explained: “We couldn’t believe it was in our cinema. On top of that, it was Star Wars. It must have just blown my tiny mind.”

On the duality of performing, he said: “I never find the acting of anything hard. I have just been doing it a long time, and I trust myself. Before I was even doing it, I was sort of arrogantly self-assured. I’m not like that about lots of things in my life.

"That said, if you were to speak to [his wife] Mary, two weeks before I started Halston, I was s****ing bricks. There’s something about approaching a role – you feel like you’ve got to do it all. So I am both of those things: I’m a nervous wreck, and I’m absolutely self-assured. But I forget before I start filming that I’m self-assured.”

Would he ever want to get back into Kenobi character? He said: “I really hope we do another. If I could do one of these every now and again – I’d just be happy about it.”

Speaking about the first time McGregor did a scene with Vader (Hayden Christensen) in full costume without a helmet, he revealed: “I got a jolt of fear that made me six years old again. I’ve never experienced that before. I just about c***ped my pants.”

Back in the day, McGregor says he was mad for Oasis. He shared: “If you spoke to anybody who came around my house in the ’90s, it would always end up with There and Then, the video where they walk out and Noel’s got the Union Jack guitar. That went on after dinner and would bore everyone to death. I was in my twenties, but I was like a 14-year-old fan. It was kind of embarrassing.”

Talking about how different his relationship with fame is now compared to back in 2000s, he said: "There’s something about the excitement of the fact that it’s happened which is hard to contain. I don’t know how well I did or didn’t contain it. I just know that my relationship with it is very different now.”

“I don’t feel like that guy anymore. I don’t have the same relationship with my fame. That’s to do with age and experience, also just a realisation of what works and what doesn’t. At that time, there was a hedonistic side to my life, which ended up not suiting the rest of my life.”

The July/ August issue of British GQ is available via digital download and on newsstands on 28 June