Since 1999, Ewan McGregor has been portraying dashing Jedi knight Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars saga. Inheriting a role made famous by Sir Alec Guinness, McGregor has brought a youthful flair and adventurous spirit to the part, at once evoking the essence of the character audiences remember from the first Star Wars trilogy while making Ben Obi-Wan a truly unique screen hero.

In this interview, the award-winning actor discusses his role, his love of adventure and his astounding lightsabre battle in Star Wars: Episode III _ Revenge of the Sith.



Q: Do you remember the first movie you ever saw?

McGregor: [It] could possibly have been Star Wars: Episode IV _ A New Hope. I went to see it with my brother after school one day. I lived in a town called Crieff [in Scotland] and my mum and dad were taking us to the big city of Glasgow because we were going to see Star Wars. Mainly, we were going to see it because my uncle [Denis Lawson] was in it. My mum's brother played Wedge in Episodes IV, V and VI, so we went to see my uncle in the first Star Wars film. We were very excited, and I remember being picked up outside the school gates by my mum and dad, and we got in the car and we were really excited all the way there. We sat down just excited to see Uncle Denis on the big screen _ and then we got Star Wars as well. It completely blew us away. So, that was my first-ever film, and I was six.

Since your earliest cinema memory is `Star Wars', how does this final episode [`Revenge of the Sith'] set itself apart from the other movies in the saga?

Well, I think if anything it's more Star Wars-y than the last two. In Episode I, there was an awful lot of setting up to do. We had to set up a huge saga and we had a lot of work to do, especially with the idea of the Jedis. We knew what they were about from the first three, but we had only seen them after their collapse. We had to show what it was like when the Jedis were the knights of the galaxy.
This one is quite operatic in scale, you know. There's non-stop action in it. I'm finding to my physical peril that it's ridiculous how much action there is in it! And, of course, it's the last one. So we really pulled out all the stops, I think!

Your character has evolved a lot through Episodes I and II, and in many ways Obi-Wan Kenobi has become a role model. What is that like as an actor, knowing that so many people look up to Obi-Wan?

The best experience to come out of making these movies is knowing how they have affected children. Until I had made Episode I, I had never made a movie that children could watch. I love kids, I like the way they see the world, and my happiest times with regard to Star Wars are always when kids ask me, ``What's it like?'' or ``How did you cut Darth Maul in half?'' and ``Did you really do that? How do you switch your lightsabre on?'' They remind you of the magic in these movies, and that's a fantastic feeling. I don't spend too much of my time thinking about role models and things like that. I suppose it surprises me a bit when kids say that Obi-Wan's their favourite, because I tend to think that Anakin Skywalker's the hero. Until this one, at least! [Laughs.] Someone recently told me that they went to a kid's birthday party, I think it was an 8th birthday, and three or four of the kids had come dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi and they were all fighting with their lightsabres in the garden. To me, that was a really bizarre image!

Perhaps kids have a connection with Obi-Wan because he's a mentor?

That's right. We see right from the start, in Episode I, that Obi-Wan becomes a mentor and a master to this little boy, Anakin. That has a fatherly element to it, there's no question. And he's a disciplinarian and he's always telling Anakin off, but Anakin's always being cheeky to him, so there's a father-son thing, which is really nice. In the end of this movie, I refer to him as being like a brother _ certainly a much older brother and a younger brother, but that's the relationship. It has really jelled in this, you see their relationship is complete now, in Episode III. You see from the way we deal with situations and in battle that we're still joking with one another and always looking out for each other. Very often, Anakin is saving my bacon when I've screwed up again; he steps in to help out. It's nice. There's an awful lot of Hayden [Christensen, who plays Darth Vader in Episode III] and I in it, our friendship, because we got on so well.

You definitely get to explore that side of yourself in this movie. Can you tell us a little bit about the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin at the end of `Revenge of the Sith'?

I'm very happy with all of the fighting scenes! They were incredibly exhausting to do, and there's so many of them _ there's such a lot of fighting and it's such an intense burst of energy to do them. Hayden and I got them to such a pitch that they are incredibly fast. I must say it's one thing we do really well together: We do these fight scenes fantastically well! I hope it's alright to say that, even though it sounds like I'm blowing our trumpet, but it's relentless and it's exhausting, then when you go back and look at them on the playback, it looks extraordinary and I'm very proud of them.

How has the character of Obi-Wan grown from Episode I to Episode III?

There's quite a lot going on in these films. The whole slide to the dark side has been quite carefully done. It comes from very human things _ that Anakin is in love, that he is going to be a father, that he has jealousy and suspicion in him. I don't know, I think we've all done that _ messed things up by being too emotional, because we were young and naive and not able to step back and use reason. Anakin is young and passionate and he sees things that only he can see, and that leads him to dark places, and that leads to enormous disappointment for Obi-Wan. Right up to the very end, I think both for me and for Obi-Wan that there's still hope that Anakin can come back, can return from the dark side. I think it's quite touching _ Obi-Wan and Padme {AAC} [Amidala, played by Natalie Portman] want him to know that he can give all of this up, they can just go away and Anakin and Padme {AAC} can be together. In the end, he wasn't able to stop it happening. He was in charge of Anakin and it happened, despite him. That's quite a heavy weight to carry, so he goes off and sits in the desert for so many years and he turns into Alec Guinness. Which is not a bad thing, really. It's not too bad.

Has it been difficult to play a character that was already a cinematic icon?

I always watch a lot of Alec Guinness before I start! I've done so each time. And I'm that much closer to him now than I was in Episode I, so this is my last shot at making it match up, at making it really lead into Alec Guinness. But, then, I've also tried to find the most interesting side of playing Obi-Wan, of playing someone we will know and love as a young man, but knowing that he's someone we remember as an older man.

Apart from the extraordinary lightsabre fights, what will you carry with you as memories of making Episode III?

I was on the set with C-3PO! It really took me back, and I remembered what it was like to be six or seven and watching these films, and I felt the excitement of actually being in them now. The other one, funnily enough, was with R2-D2. It was on his last day, and I was in his last scene and it was really quite weird, actually. I found myself getting quite choked up about it _ about this robot! I thought it was quite a moment. I remember that on Episode I it was a thrill the first time he was brought onto the set; suddenly, we all found ourselves standing around looking at him. But now I've worked with him a lot, and I'm very fond of him. I thought it was quite sad when he finished, I really did.

 20TH CENTURY FOX