Ewan McGregor has spoken about moving home to Perthshire after decades away from Scotland, and his excitement at returning to the stage alongside Alan Cumming in Pitlochry.
The 55-year-old actor, whose career took him from Trainspotting to Star Wars and Hollywood hits including Black Hawk Now and Moulin Rouge, now lives near his home town of Crieff with his wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead and their five-year-old son Laurie.
McGregor left home at 16 to study drama in Fife before moving to London and later Los Angeles. Speaking to Variety during the Edinburgh International Film Festival, he told Variety magazine: “It feels really, really good - I’m surprised how effortless it’s been. I didn’t imagine it, but I’m really glad of it. I feel very comfortable there. And I’ve got my little boy, who’s 5, and he’s going to grow up there in much the same way that I did, which is nice.”
He added that he’s been enjoying jumping on his Vespa to meet family members, including his brother in the north of Scotland.
“I just went up there for a cup of tea with him, and when I got back, I realised I’d never had that experience in my whole adult life, of being able to pop round. I’ve always lived somewhere. I left home at 16. I was really missing something all these years, but now I can jump on my bike and I’ll be at my mum and dad’s house in half an hour.”
McGregor grew up in Crieff, where his father worked as a teacher and careers master at Morrison’s Academy. His uncle, the actor Denis Lawson, also helped inspire his interest in performing.
He left Perthshire to attend a foundation course at Kirkcaldy College of Technology before studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
His breakthrough came in Danny Boyle’s 1994 film Shallow Grave, followed two years later by his defining performance as Mark Renton in Trainspotting.
Now one of Scotland’s most internationally recognisable actors, McGregor is preparing for a particularly local homecoming.
He will appear with Cumming in the world premiere of a stage adaptation of Supernova at Pitlochry Festival Theatre next summer.
“We’ve done two readings of it, just of the film script,” he said. “But I’ve never got through the read-throughs without bawling my eyes out — it’s just so moving.”
Written and directed for the screen by Harry Macqueen, the original 2020 film starred Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker, a couple confronting the impact of an early-onset dementia diagnosis.
Macqueen is adapting his screenplay for the theatre, with Black Watch and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child director John Tiffany leading the production. Steven Hoggett will oversee movement, while theatrical designer and illusionist Jamie Harrison is also part of the creative team.
McGregor said he was delighted to be working at the Perthshire theatre with his old friend Cumming and described Macqueen’s evolving stage text as deeply moving.
“I can’t wait to get started and to bring this piece to the stage,” he said.
Ewan McGregor was at the Edinburgh Film Festival this month for a special screening and celebration for the 30th anniversary of Trainspotting. Speaking about the film he said he thinks it has stood the test of time and wrote to director Danny Boyle about it: “It was shown somewhere, and I sat in and watched it, and I saw it on the big screen. I hadn’t seen it for years and years and years. And I wrote to Danny afterwards, and I’m not in touch with Danny all the time, so it was a rare occasion, but I wrote to him just to say how amazing a film it was.
“A lot of things that I would’ve made 30 years ago or 25 years ago or 20 years ago, they might have dated, or what was thought relevant then might not be relevant now in terms of cinema technique, but Trainspotting felt like it felt then.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s lost any of its vitality at all.”