STEP away from the motorbike, Charley Boorman, because Ewan McGregor, your best mate and fellow adventurer, has his heart set on hitting the road with a new companion.
“I’ve got a dog, Sid, and I’ve trained him to ride in my sidecar and I thought we could do a trip together,” says the Scottish actor, sitting back in his chair, chortling to himself.
When Robert Harris, the author of Ewan’s latest project, The Ghost, described him as “both an everyman but also glamorous in a believable way”, he was right on the money.
Dressed in jeans, white T-shirt and a blue V-neck jumper, Ewan doesn’t exude movie-star charisma when he walks into the room, but there’s a likeability factor about him which has earned him movie-star status.
After a sabbatical of sorts, which saw Ewan and Charley ride around the world twice, the 38-year-old is very much back on our screens, with his next two films out within a month of each other.
His movie career began 14 years ago with his breakout performance as the heroin-addicted Mark Renton in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, a role that catapulted him to instant international fame.
An eclectic mix of roles has since ensued, including Jane Austen’s Emma alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, comedy A Life Less Ordinary with Cameron Diaz, musical Moulin Rouge opposite Nicole Kidman and the legendary role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars.
In need of a change of pace by 2004, Ewan had decided to take some time out from the movie-making treadmill and, along with Charley, embarked on Long Way Round, a motorcycle adventure that saw the two traverse the globe.
“I didn’t feel like I’d decided not to make movies when I decided to do Long Way Round, but I suppose that’s partly what was going on subconsciously,” he says.
“It’s an adventure and there’s part of me that likes this idea of adventure. I spend a lot of my life in a very controlled environment where I get picked up with a car at this time and I’m working on these scenes, then I can have this for lunch and then work on more scenes, and I get taken home and have to work on these pages.
“It’s very ordered and organised, and there’s something fantastic about having all the decision-making myself. You decide when to put petrol in your tank and you decide when to stop to eat. There’s something quite free about that.”
In 2007, the pair set off on the road once again, this time across Africa in Long Way Down. When he wasn’t on two wheels, Ewan was treading the boards, first in Guys and Dolls and later as Iago in Donmar Warehouse’s Othello. It was only towards the end of 2007 that Ewan felt ready to return to the big screen.
“I felt very strongly that it was time to get back into movies and thought now’s the time to hit it hard and just re-establish myself and make my mark. That’s partly because I felt I was more on the periphery than I would like to be and partly because I just felt like it,” he explains.
The first project he signed up to was I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey, a film that has only just arrived at cinemas this week.
It tells the true story of conman Steven Russell, who falls for Ewan’s character, Phillip Morris, in prison.
“My one fear was not playing a gay character; my one fear was looking like a straight guy’s version of a gay character,” Ewan says.
“That was what I worried about.”
The actor admits that he has found the attention paid to the homosexual aspect of the story rather depressing.
“It is a reflection, I guess, on where we’re at that it’s such a big deal that it’s a love story between two gay men, like the idea of two men being in love is slightly shocking, or almost taboo. It’s beyond me,” he says.
He feels the same sense of bewilderment over questions relating to him stripping off in films.
“I’ve never understood why that was such an issue,” he says.
But he admits he has never been one to shy away from graphic scenes on screen. Sex, drug-taking, murder, he has checked them all off on his CV, so is there anything he wouldn’t do?
“I wouldn’t do anything that was morally wrong,” he says.
“I wouldn’t make a pro-Nazi movie, you know. It’s all to do with taste and, on the day, how far you think something should be pushed or not. That’s a discussion that’s not only in my hands, but the director and the other actors, and how that moment’s going to fit in the movie and whether it’s going to make sense to push it or not.”
He pauses for a moment before revealing that his most “exposing moment” was doing a dance for Jim’s character in Phillip Morris, an experience he describes as “the rawest, most open scene for me”. He was later devastated to discover that part of the scene had ended up on the cutting-room floor.
After Phillip Morris, Ewan threw himself back into work, shooting Amelia opposite Hilary Swank, Angels And Demons with Tom Hanks and The Men Who Stare At Goats with George Clooney. His next big-screen appearance will be in Roman Polanski’s film, The Ghost.
“He’s a perfectionist,” says Ewan, on working with the legendary director.
“He’s quite tough on how we play (the scenes), and he’s meticulous about how the lines are said, about how you pick up a glass. ‘Why would you pick it up like this?’,” he says, impersonating Polish-born Polanski.
“He’s tough on you, but he’s like your mum, he’s always right. It’s annoying.”
Other projects include the independent movies, Beginners and The Last Word, which provided him with the opportunity to work with his actor uncle, Dennis Lawson, for the first time.
“I love him to death and he’s my acting inspiration always,” says Ewan, of the man he credits with inspiring him to act.
“He’s the only person I ever turn to if I need to speak to someone about work, so it was lovely to be on set with him. It was really special.”
Now 38, Ewan says he’s feeling content with how things have worked out, both professionally and personally.
“I’ve worked with some amazing actors and great directors, and at the moment, I don’t have any plans to change that,” he says.
“It has been a lot of work, but I’ve managed to spend more time with my family in the summer holidays in the last year, so the balance has been good.”
He adds that one of the effects of living the nomadic life of an actor is relishing the more mundane aspects of life when he’s back home with his wife, Eve, who he met in 1995, and their daughters, Clara and Esther.
“When you’re away so much, the school run and picking the kids up from tennis and all that become a real treat. I hanker after them,” he says.
As for whether he has started thinking about how to mark the passing of another decade, he admits he’s not sure how to feel.
“When I turned 30, I was relieved. I’d stopped drinking and I just thought, ‘Och’, ’cos your 20s are hectic. Now I’m approaching 40, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I suppose it’s all right.”
Perhaps he’ll mark the occasion with another motorcycle trip?
“I don’t think I have got it out of my system,” he ponders, with a smile.
“I’d love to go through South America. I think if you’re a filthy, dirty biker on the side of the road, you’re less of a kidnap threat than a businessman in a Mercedes. I think the dangers shouldn’t be ignored but, at the same time, shouldn’t stop you, either.”
He was born on March 31, 1971, in Perthshire, Scotland.
He studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama but left six months before graduation after being offered a role in Dennis Potter’s TV series, Lipstick on Your Collar.
He was once room-mates with Jude Law, with whom he later set up a production company, alongside Sadie Frost, Sean Pertwee and Jonny Lee Miller.
He met Charley Boorman on the 1997 film, The Serpent’s Kiss.
He lost out on the role of Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet, but got to work with the acclaimed director in Moulin Rouge five years later.