Ewan McGregor transcript (Parkinson)

Michael: Now my final guest is a lad from Perth in Scotland who made it big in Hollywood. One critic described him as the actor of our lifetime. He's played everything from a junkie to a Jedi, from a song and dance man to a pigeon.(Excerpt from Valiant)

Michael: Welcome to the voice of the pigeon, Ewan McGregor. (Applause)

Ewan: Thank you.

Michael: How do you play a pigeon?

Ewan: I don't know. You have just try and find this voice, you know? Not worry so much that he's a pigeon but just who he is and what he's about.

Michael: It's an interesting story, it's called Valiant, it's an interesting story because these are the pigeons who have been used in two wars to deliver messages and things like that.

Ewan: That's right, it's based on fact. There were thirty two homing pigeons who were decorated for bravery after the Second World War. (Laughter) And a horse. I said this to someone the other day, I said, 'There were thirty two pigeons who were given a medal after the Second World War, and a horse.' And this guy went, 'What would a pigeon do with a horse?' (Laughter) But it's a true story and it's terribly sweet and what I thought was lovely about it was that it's British, it's a British animation. And it takes so many talented people to create one of these animated movies. And it was all done, I believe, in Ealing. And I though it was fantastic. And it's a real cracking, old fashioned British war story, really, is what it is. But with pigeons.

Michael: Does the pigeon mate in it?

Jamie: Parky, it's all about sex tonight. What's the matter with you? (Laughter)

Michael: It's not all about sex.

Jamie: You must be having a second wind or something. (Laughter)

Michael: When you see a pigeon, you think of food. (Laughter)

Jamie: Yeah.

Ewan: I think it's implied towards the end. It's implied.

Michael: A frisson.

Ewan: You don't see it! That would be unpleasant. (Coos like a pigeon)

Michael: Now this is your animated period of course, because you've got another animated film out, a big American. This movie called Robot is doing huge business in America isn't it. It's just knocked off Hitch from number one.

Ewan: Yeah it's the number one film in the States.

Michael: So there must have been a big difference than doing this. More pressure and this sort of thing?

Ewan: Yeah, they were different. I think I had to do a lot more work on the American one. I'd never done an animation before, I didn't really know what it entailed and I started on the American one, which is called Robots, over two years ago. And we recorded every couple of months, they'd drag me back and we'd do another four or five hours. And with Valiant I went in and recorded the whole script and then went back one other time and did little tidy up lines and then I think just one other time to do bits and bobs and that was it. But the American one was going on and on and on. I may have just shot it really.

Michael: So explain to me the character that you play.

Ewan: In Robots?

Michael: Yeah.

Ewan: In Robots, what's really lovely about it as a film is that it takes place on a planet where there are only machines, there's only robots. And it's kind of reassuring, there's no human beings. That's a worry but it's true. And I play Rodney Copperbottom who is a young, enthusiastic wannabe inventor.

Michael: Alright, so now we've got a clip here showing Rodney meeting a lady, with a rather large and bustling back side.(Excerpt from Robots) (Applause)

Michael: Your kids will enjoy seeing dad, hearing dad doing that.

Ewan: Yeah, I took my two wee girls to see it in America, recently, the Robots one and they loved it. And it's lovely that after five minutes or so they'd forgotten that it was me and they were just enthused by the film, because it's good, they're both lovely films I think.

Michael: And you've got coming up again, of course, the last Star Wars.

Ewan: Yes, in May.

Michael: Are you glad to be rid of all that now.

Ewan: It's nice to have closure on it, I have to say.

Michael: Closure.

Ewan: Yeah, I'm trying to be really polite! (Laughter) I've been quite vocal about how difficult the technicalities of those films have been.

Michael: The blue screen.

Ewan: The blue screen. (To Billie) Do you have a lot of that?

Billie: Yeah, it's taxing. It's the hardest bit, I find.

Ewan: Yeah, because it's not really what we do. It's certainly not what I was trained for, you know actors work with each other and it's much more about what's going on between us than what I'm doing or you're doing, good acting is anyway. And so when you suddenly remove everything, the location and the other actors and you're just on your own delivering lines to a tennis ball on a stick or whatever, it's really hard. And not much fun, but what's really nice about the Star Wars films is being in them. And I really mean that, I will always be chuffed that I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi and especially in this last one because it does bridge the gap really nicely to the one that I went ballistic about when I was six or seven.

Michael: You've done most things now, in a very short time, in Hollywood. It's been a most extraordinary career. Do you stop and think, what's happening to me? Or are you in charge, in a sense, are you controlled about your decision making?

Ewan: I'm getting better at it. I don't think you can ever really be in control of it. Unless you're producing and writing your own work, which I don't do. But I think I have a better over all sense of it or I'm better at taking time off. It doesn't seem like it now with a lot of the things coming out but a lot of the things I did, you know, Star Wars I did two years ago but it just happens they're all coming out now. I mean last year I took eight or nine months off to go round the world with my mate Charlie on bikes.

Michael: That's right, I was going to ask you about that. I mean, how much was that necessary? How much that getting away from what you were doing? How much was that getting away from the routine of film making?

Ewan: Yeah, if you do too many. I mean the year before I did the bike trip I did Big Fish, which I loved with Tim Burton, Star Wars and a film called Stay. Back to back, three films in a year. And the process of film making can become very tedious, the endless waiting and just when the camera's turning it's such a break from the day, you know? And I really needed to get away from that and as I rode east out of London I just felt so liberated that all my responsibilities were for the next three months were to get up every morning, get on this motorbike and keep riding it east.

Michael: This was a long journey, this was a different thing from nipping down to the west country for a day. This was three months before, physical and psychological training before, because you were going with Charlie, often in stressful situations.

Ewan: We made a kind of pact at the beginning to be straight up with each other. And honest with one another because we did discuss it, you know it's a long way to be sitting looking at the back of someone's helmet if you don't really like them. So we made a pact to say if something was annoying us, to just say it and it happened very rarely but we found it was very effective. To you know, say, look when you do that, it really gets on my nerves. And then it's like, well funnily enough when you do that it really gets on my nerves. And then we'd both go oh sorry, sorry and then it's fine. Where as sitting with it is the worst thing you can do, I think.

Michael: And what about the actual countries you went through, because you went through some extraordinary places didn't you? Which are the ones when you play back in your mind a video of what happened. Which are the ones that come clearest to your memory?

Ewan: I think everything, Kazakhstan leading into Mongolia and then Siberia. Those were the three big countries that during the preparation that we were always talking about. And Kazakhstan was more an exercise in avoiding the police, not because we were doing anything wrong but they were desperate to lead us through the length of Kazakhstan behind the lights, you know, they wanted us to be given a police escort all the way, which wasn't really our intention. So we just had to try to get rid of the police all the time in Kazakhstan and then when we got into Mongolia it was truly what we were looking for. It was absolute adventure, there were no roads, just tracks. We were navigating using our GPS but there's no GPS software for Mongolia because there aren't really any roads. So it shows you roughly where you are and you look and go, there's a lake and yeah, there's a lake over there. So we were really navigating by the skin of our pants really and it was hard, hard work. Really hard.

Michael: Was it dangerous?

Ewan: No, I never really felt in danger. Well, there was a time in Kazakhstan when someone pulled a gun on us. Well ultimately, I think he was having a joke (laughter). We'd stopped and we were writing a book so we were always looking for the cover shot for it. And we were on this desert, there was a road stretching out into the desert and got the bikes like that and me and Charlie stood in front of the motorcycles and our cameraman, Claudio had the camera and he put his video camera down on the road. And this white lada appeared coming the other way, with five guys in it and in Kazakhstan and everywhere east of there, it's very popular to have gold teeth and the driver kind of smiled and had all this gold and then he opened the door and looked at the camera. And I thought, oh dear, he's gonna take the camera, because you know, you're very suspicious of people and we needn't have been suspicious of him because his friend in the back went like this and pulled out a hand gun and pointed at Charlie and I and I can remember looking down the barrel of this guy's gun and all was thinking, you know people say that your life flashes in front of your eyes and things, and all I came up with was, oh no! (Laughter) I can remember really clearly going, oh no.

Jamie: Did you not thing, but you're in a lada! (Laughter) And it's ruined it for you.

Ewan: He just put the gun away burst out laughing and they tore off. But we're so unused to guns in this country and I think we're really lucky that we are. And I think he was just showing us that he had a gun, basically. (Mimes pointing gun)

Michael: When you got back with Charlie was there a deeper bond or had you got sick of each other?

Ewan: No, no. Sadly I've been in America really almost, certainly since the show came on the television here, I've been in the States. So I've missed everything that's happened. And Charlie, he's been opening motorcycle shows across the country and lording it up in BMW showrooms going, 'yes and on the road of bones of course I helped Ewan out of the ditch.' (Laughter) And he's been telling lies to everyone and I've missed the whole thing, so I'm back to keep him in check, you know! But we're very solid, there's no question. You can either do a trip like that and fall out or you have a bond that's strong forever and I think the latter is true in our case.

Michael: And now you're back here with us for a while. You're back home and you're gonna do Guys and Dolls.

Ewan: Yes, I'm more excited about that than I've been about anything for a long time. I start rehearsing in a couple of weeks and I long for that. I miss that, for us actors, that rehearsal space there's something so phenomenal for us there. And then I'm playing Sky Masterson for six months in the West End. So I'm really stoked about that, I can't wait to get going.

Michael: Song and dance eh, eight times a week.

Ewan: Singing and dancing and having a laugh, eight times a week, it doesn't sound bad to me.

Michael: Thank you very much indeed, Ewan McGregor. (Applause) Back in a moment with more from Ewan McGregor, Billie Piper and Jamie Oliver, see you then. (Commercial break)

Michael: You've all made it very young, very successful. Let's talk a little bit about the down side of that, if there is a down side to it. Jamie, in your series in the last show we saw this week there's a very extraordinary moment, a powerful moment, when you start talking to camera about something that's happened, some press intrusion.(Excerpt from School Dinners in which Jamie cries when talking about false press allegations)

Michael: Not fair.

Jamie: I hate that, I feel a bit of a poof really. I guess that's documentary making for you isn't it.

Michael: Well it happened, it's part of your life. It's touching on what we were talking about before, the strain that it's put on your relationship and all of that. And you bore all that (to Ewan)...

Ewan: Yes, exactly the same thing. It's really, it's a very interesting problem and people don't like to hear us talking about it particularly because I think the public think, yeah well, there's famous people moaning about being famous again and but I have it with my children. My eldest is nine and my little one is three and I have really strong feelings that it's my human right to protect them as a father. And part of that is to protect their identity. I don't want people to know what they look like and if someone's hiding behind a bus or a tree with a camera he's legally, he's not really but they usually get round it somehow, allowed to take a picture of my children and publish them in a magazine and certainly post them on the internet. Which takes away my rights to protect them.

Michael: There's no doubt about it, it has got worse, there is more intrusion into what should be people's private lives. I mean, no one signs up to have their dustbins gone through. I mean nobody signs up to having people hiding in the undergrowth taking pictures of you.

Jamie: My friends and my family are very precious to me actually and I suppose the difference between me and possibly you guys is that I've compromised that line even more so, where there's a very clear line. And I've walked into an area is slightly more open. And I tell you what's sad is when they're obsessed with real negative things. It's kind of like, every time there's a phone call in the office it's like is it good or bad news. It is, that's what I say, good or bad? And they say good and I say phew.

Michael: Let's talk about positive things because they're going to make Fifteen into a movie, aren't they?

Jamie: Do you know what, yes, they're on the second option but do you know what? The script landed on my door mat today.

Billie: Wow.

Ewan: Who's playing your role? (Laughter) I could grow my hair a bit. (Mimes chopping and cooking) (Laughter)

Michael: You learnt to cook for one film?

Ewan: Yeah, we had a cookery lesson from an ex heroin addict in Glasgow for Train Spotting. It was like the generation game, there were five or six actors lined up on this table and he showed us first, you know, how to cook up a shot of heroin and then we all had to do it ourselves. And he walked up and down the line, so funny, giving us marks out of ten. (Laughter)

Michael: OK, well I hope it happens anyway.

Jamie: Yeah, well it's very exciting, let's see if it happens or not.

Michael: Thanks very much for being my guests tonight. (Applause) My thanks to Ewan McGregor, to Billie Piper and to Jamie Oliver and to Peter Cincotti. From all of us here, a very good night. Good night. (Applause)