Ewan McGregor: I think the whole process was about re-living the films that I watched as a kid. I watched all these films when I was young and I don’t know why because I wasn’t born in the 60’s but I remembered them all when Peyton sent me all of the films that were referenced to ours. I knew them all and I’d seen them all many times so it was just about getting in touch with that. When I read the script, I knew exactly what it was all about. I had the references I suppose and then it was just getting the chance to be all my favorite actors on screen – Cary Grant and all of those guys.

What about all the tools that they use? The martini glass…

I always come with my own tool.

Once they dress you in the clothes and put you on that set, is the transformation easy for you given the circumstances?

The process into it was really really hard and I’m finding this more and more as I go along. It’s become a part of my process to not imagine I’ll be able to pull this one off. It’s happening to me more or less every time I start a job now. I think, “I really can’t fucking do this one.” I’ve had to kind of realize that that’s becoming part of it and in a way that’s what makes it so exciting because then, hopefully, a couple weeks later you find that there you are on set pulling it off. On this one, I am coming off a film that I made in Scotland called, “Young Adam” which was the polar opposite of this and they were really back to back. I got back from Scotland to my home in London, I think it was a Saturday and I started rehearsing this on that Monday. I mean, literally one day off between the two of them. The film in Scotland was a very low budget, dark, 50’s, erotic, introspective film about a loner, a guy who’s given up his moral self. Here I was playing, not camp, but the opposite of that whereas the Scotland film was totally inward looking and my character hardly said anything at all. Here I was playing a character that demanded you kind of slapped it on from the outside if you like. The comedy in these 60’s movies is much more played than the way we would play in a contemporary romantic comedy for instance, where you don’t play the comedy. That seems to be a rule I’ve heard since I started acting, “Oh, you mustn’t ever play the comedy.” And here I was on set really playing the fucking comedy. For the first week of rehearsals I couldn’t get into it. I really couldn’t and I think when you speak to the other actors you’ll find that it did take a lot of effort to find this because it’s something that’s a style that hasn’t really been explored since the 60’s. I was delighted to see that it doesn’t look like hard work when I saw the film but some of it really was because it was a quite difficult thing to do.

The soundtrack is almost like additional dialogue. Did you notice that it adds an interesting element to the film?

I hadn’t seen any of the film until I saw it finished, so I couldn’t tell you how it was working before the music as opposed to afterwards other than it never works without the music. Any film doesn’t and It’s one of the big mistakes that studios will never seem to learn that they test films without the score and then get really scared because things aren’t working but it’s not finished. I had this experience when I directed a tiny short film in London and I heard the exact same thing from the people who put the money up for me to do it. I didn’t have any dialogue in my film. It was a completely silent movie. It was about a guy – a lost musician trying to write a tune. The dialogue, if you like, was the broken tune in his head trying to put it together. They screen tested it without my knowledge to a bunch of people before I had any music on it. It was like playing it without any sound. They came back and said, “You’ve got to cut this because it’s not working at all.” I said, “It’s not finished.” They went, “Well, no, but you’ve really got to cut, it’s 12 minutes long. You’ve got to cut it down to five. It’s just not working.” I said, “It’s not finished.” They said, “Well, no, it’s not working.” “It’s not fucking finished!” It’s a lesson that nobody seems to learn.

Would you say this film is a tribute to the Doris Day/Rock Hudson films or a parody?

I don’t think it’s a parody. I think it’s a stab at doing a sex comedy set in the 60’s and we’ve made it to look like one. We certainly acted like we were in one. I wouldn’t like to think we parodied one because that would have been much easier to do than it felt to do. I think the reason it was very difficult to get was because we were trying to do it right – to re-create that style. When I saw it, there were seriously two or three moments where I suddenly felt like I was eight years old again, leaning on my elbows watching the television on the weekends watching on of the original films. When it starts to rain in the street, when I’m watching the taxi drive away, I was like, “wow, what’s that feeling?” It was just me being eight or nine again. I think we were trying to be really accurate. It’s quite a strange thing to do but I think we were trying to make a 60’s sex comedy. The only thing that is different is our plot. Our only comment on it was the gender twist I think because some of them are quite misogynistic and ours turns that on its head.

How was that getting into the role of Catcher Block because he is very misogynistic and uses women?

He does, very much so yes. He uses them to the best of his ability I think. It’s funny because I suppose there were moments where that as a guy from now, it’s kind of hard to play. Every fiber of your body is going, “You can’t do that!” We’re not programmed that way any more but that was the point of the character and if anything he’s being slightly torn down. After a while it’s quite fun to do that and it’s much more fun to be that way on a film set than to be that way in real life.

Can you relate to your character at all in real life? Have you had your days of being a player?

Well, we’ve all had those days, surely. I was never quite as, well, I should be careful of what I say. People will be writing in saying, “oh yes, he was.” I related to him but more in terms of those movies that I watched and those leading men. I was never a playboy because I could never afford the suits and all that stuff when I was up to no good. But, I had my day I suppose.

Did you have a swinging bachelor pad?

I did have a swinging bachelor pad once. When I did my very first job, a television series, I was living in the very far outer reaches of eastern London at the time when I got the job and it was the first time I’d ever been paid to act. I rented a small one bedroom flat in a really nice area of London called Primrose Hill and it was right next to the park. It became the kind of apartment where all parties would begin and end. Very often me and my friends would meet on a Friday and it would be off and they would all leave on sometime on a Sunday night. It was my version of Catcher Block’s bachelor pad. It was about a quarter of the size of this room. It was much more of a realistic New York flat than the one in our movie.

Your apartment in the movie had so many gadgets…

Yeah. Occasionally the bed that shoots in and out of the sofa would get stuck but it’s all done by smoke and mirrors so the switches aren’t shooting anything in and out. There were lots of special effects guys running around pushing beds, pillows, bars and doors. It was a great looking set. When we watched it the other day, my apartment and Renee’s apartment both got rounds of applause. It’s like the old days in the theater when the curtains would go back and you’d applaud the set. I like the fact that I certainly felt inspired to applaud our sets in this movie because it just looks staggering, they way they were lit and the way they were designed by Andrew Laws.

The dancing scene at the end of the movie with Renee looked so smooth. Did you guys enjoy that?

We shot that in a day not very long ago. We just picked it up. We kept hammering the producers to let us do a song. I can’t believe we were trying to persuade them into letting us do one. I was going, “Look, I did Moulin Rouge and Renee did Chicago, shouldn’t we do a song? Don’t you think?” And they went “Well, we’ll see.” I said, “You’ll see? What the fuck are you talking about? Let us do a song!” Eventually, we ended up persuading them that it would be a good idea that we did a song. Marc Shaiman wrote a beautiful one and we recorded it in LA and then we ended up shooting this beautiful dance number for it, which was great fun. We shot it like it was a 60’s TV show. It was fun playing to the different cameras and trying to find the right camera.

Has your life changed since taking on your “Star Wars” role?

Not at all. I mean, I think what’s been interesting about it has been that very little has changed, to my relief I suppose. It was one of the things I spent a lot of time wondering about and I did before I started to do Star Wars. I questioned it a lot because I it’s not my bag really – all that might have gone along with it. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to get nailed down to playing one kind of part and I’m not particularly interested in having fans. A lot of the baggage that could have come along with it worried me however, the nearer I got to getting the part, the more I wanted to do it. I went with my gut so I went after it but really there has been precious little change, which is great. I love being in the films. The only big thing that’s changed is that the children have seen me act whereas I don’t think they’ve seen the films I’ve made up to that point, I’d certainly hope not! So now they’ve seen some of my work and I like that. I love it when kids come to talk to me about Star Wars and ask me how my light saber works. Other than that, I just get on with it. I think that the impression is that for six or seven years of your life you’re kind of “Star Wars” bound and if you’re lucky you get to do other jobs. The reality is that I spent four months making the first one and then three or four years later spent four months making the second one. I’m just about ready to start making the third one.