Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
Scotsman Ewan McGregor is an actor known for his many faces. They range from a heroin addict in Trainspotting, to an androgynous glam rocker in Velvet Goldmine, to a writer pining for true love in Moulin Rouge!, to a womanizer in Down With Love and even a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Now the 38 year-old puts on his most enigmatic face to date, as a mysterious English ghostwriter known only as The Ghost in the political thriller The Ghost Writer. We first asked McGregor how he managed to tackle a character whose background is so shrouded in mystery.
"It depends," Ewan believes, "It's helpful or not. I find in this instance, there's not a great deal written about The Ghost, we don't know very much about him. But I felt that he was not that interested in politics, not really very impressed by anyone or anything. He's kind of a man that's probably had a certain amount of failure in his writing career and he's ghostwriting books."
"And Harris talks about that as a man who's failed if you putting your name to your own writing, if you're writing under somebody else's name, there's a certain failure aspect about that," he adds, "But I also saw him as someone who's quite content and not that bothered. There's a certain kind of "fuck it" quality about him that I liked, that he doesn't give a damn about much, I think."
However, Ewan notes that The Ghost is in for more than he bargains for in the film when he has to write the memoirs for an embattled former British Prime Minister.
"I suppose I never had to write about anybody," he says, "I've never had to be a writer or a ghostwriter, so it's a particular scenario that he finds himself in. He's not a stranger to the situation. We know that he wrote a book on a musician and a rock star. We know that he wrote a book on a magician, so we know that this is his job, so he's very different. I suppose, as actors, we go into a film set and we don't necessarily know the people that we are going to be working with or any idea of what the
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
atmosphere is going to be like, but usually, we don't find out.""The think about his situation is he does find out, that the person he's writing for is not telling the truth," McGregor adds, "And that [original novel author] Robert Harris's original idea was to write a story about a man who's job it was to ask questions and what would happen if that person found out that his subject or his client wasn't, in fact, telling the truth. That was the kernels of this story. I think he realizes pretty early on from the first paragraph that he might be in for a lot of work because he's expected to put in the finished book in a month. He was led to believe that the book was mainly written and just needed some tidying up, but, of course, it's not very well-written."
The Ghost Writer has not been released yet in Britain, where the book's original novel by Robert Harris comes from. However, McGregor makes no reservation about the movie's potential to cause controversy in light of its striking similarity in situation to the country's real-life embattled former prime minister Tony Blair, who played a big hand in the controversial decision with former President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq.
"Well, there's no question that you're aware when you're reading the script the first time, you draw Tony Blair all over that character of Adam Lang," he says, "There's no doubt about that, that Harris had wrote the book about Tony Blair or thinking about him and the script that was based on that book. When you're reading a script for a character, you read it much more based on the eyes of that guy, so I was looking at it through the eyes of the ghost and imagining what it might be like, so I wasn't that aware of the political impact of the piece, because I was reading it thinking about playing him."
"And it's not until you see it finished and current events, the real world, gets closer and closer to the storyline of our film everyday," Ewan adds, "So, then, you see more the political angle on the piece, but mainly, basically, our ex-Prime Minister in the film, Adam Lang,
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
is being charged with war crimes and is going to have to make a statement and is going to have to sit before a tribunal and explain his decision-making, taking Britain into the Iraq War and talk about rendition flights and whether Britain was, in fact, responsible for torturing prisoners on behalf of the United States Of America or not. And that's as it should be. So if I'm in a film that says that's what should happen, I'm very happy."McGregor is an actor known for doing characters with many different accents. We wondered if the accent is significant for him in how he shapes his performances.
"Well, it just depends on who the character is really, you have to understand it at that," he says, "Whoever the character, wherever they're from, sometimes it's specific in the script, and sometimes, it's your own choice. With Star Wars, for instance, I had, who I'd become on film, sit and watch three movies of the guy who I end up being, so I had to kind of work from that backwards and imagine what he would sound like as a young man, which is quite difficult because Alec [Guiness's] accent and especially in Star Wars, we only think about that sound that he gave to Obi-Wan Kenobi as being an older man, so to make it as a younger man was quite hard, actually, but I tried. But with this, I could have attempted just to play it with my own accent and I, in fact, suggested that, but Roman, Robert Harris felt that they didn't want him to be from Scotland and they wanted him to be from England.There's some mention at the beginning of the book that Harris has written that Lang's folk are from Scotland and they just didn't want any confusion running about The Ghost being also from Scotland, so I knew he had to be English."
"I knew that he went to Cambridge, there's a reference in the book about him going to the same university as Lang did, so he went to Cambridge," McGregor continues, "And normally, I think it'd be safe to say that an actor would play someone who went to Cambridge with a kind of RP accent, a standard English
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
accent, like Olivia [Williams] has in the film. And I find that RP makes me feel posh, it makes me feel like someone of a particular social standing. And I wanted very much for The Ghost not to be in the same social area as the people he's with, so he's already out of his depth because he's writing a book about the ex-British Prime Minister and he's used to writing autobiographies for magicians and rock stars. So he's already slightly out of his depth, but I wanted him to feel socially out of his comfort zone. So I made him sound like he came from London, I give him a kind of London accent, and that was very helpful as an actor and that I like and I could identify with, because I lived in London for a long time. It's very helpful to playing a character if you don't sound like your character or your character doesn't have your voice. It helps take the character further away from me and that's quite helpful."Ewan discussed his experience working with the film's Oscar-winning director, the legendary and controversial Roman Polanski, who's legendary films range from Rosemary's Baby to Macbeth to Chinatown to Tess to The Pianist.
"It was amazing to work with Roman," McGregor recalls, "I was the luckiest of all the actors in that I was on set from day one until the very last day of shooting. And I got an opportunity to watch him work and be his actor on set for four months. An it was very, very interesting. He drives you, he drives you quite hard, Roman. And, at great detail, you're called upon to look for the truth of a scene and to play it very truthfully. You're not very worried about and he's not very worried about how long that scene is."
"He just wants you to move from point-to-point as honestly as possible and it's fine details that make something very realistic," he continues, "I think in a film like The Pianist, he has such brutal, detailed work that you're not even necessarily that aware of that makes the audience feel very familiar with what they see. Somehow, he connects the audience to his material in a way that
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
makes us feel that we're kind of part of it and so that's what he did with us. He was always pushing us to find the details of a scene."The Ghost Writer got a bit of unwanted, negative publicity. Polanski's arrest in Zurich, Switzerland has occurred in the midst of The Ghost Writer's post-production. The arrest, back in September of last year, was to extradite the director stemming from his controversial flight from the U.S. to France after he had pleaded guilty to committing statutory rape on a then-13 year-old girl back in 1977. We wondered whether McGregor believed the film's touching on extradition held any personal significance on Polanski directing the film.
"No, I didn't think so," Ewan replies, "I don't see Roman in The Ghost Writer, no, I didn't. I mean, there were some scenes that felt relevant to his life, With Lang, when Lang's discussing once he's been accused of perhaps having committed war crimes, he can't be extradited to Great Britain from the United States Of America because it doesn't recognize the international criminal court. During that scene, there was some discussion there about the countries where he can and can't go to and that seemed very relevant to Roman's situation at the time."
"He lives in France, we were filming in Berlin in Germany," he adds, "And he, for instance, isn't able to travel to Great Britain or America, obviously, so there were some moments there that he felt were relevant to his life. However, they were written in the book and the book was written three or four years ago, before Robert had any idea that Roman might direct the film. So, although we all felt on set that they seemed quite poignant to Roman's life, it wasn't discussed and no one talked about that at the time.'
Another interesting aspect of The Ghost Writer is that the much of the film is set on an island during the middle of winter. Ewan reveals that they had to film on an island deliberately during really bad weather.
"Yes, the whole thing was scheduled around bad weather," he says, "All the exterior stuff was scheduled upfront and we shot on an island called Sylt, which is right in the northwestern coast of Germany
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
right near Denmark. It's a kind of holiday island for the northern, wealthy German people during the summertime.""But in the wintertime, it's very empty, very, very rainy and blustery and really, really cold," McGregor adds, "We were there to find bad weather, but of course, we started shooting there and then, we had a very freak blue sky period where it got very pleasant on Sylt. We had to come back and return to Berlin to pick up some studio stuff while we waited for the weather to turn nasty again."
One particular aspect of Polanski's directing that McGregor found most clever was how he approached the ending of The Ghost Writer, which departed from the original novel in many respects.
"The ending of the film wasn't in the script and was not scripted," he says, "Indeed, we started and we were halfway through shooting when Roman came up to me one day and said he had an idea for the end and I went, oh yeah?"
"And he described the ending and I was surprised to learn that the ending wasn't what I imagined halfway through shooting the film," Ewan continues, "And then, the way he shot it was just extraordinary, it's just one simple, simple shot and it's very, very clever."
While Ewan is immensely proud of how the film tackles politics, he personally is rather disgusted when it comes to how politics operate, particularly in Britain.
"I'm not that interested in politics," McGregor believes, "I'm not that interested in politicians, in fact, I'm completely uninterested in politicians. I've never read about them. I can't read a newspaper article about politics. I just can't find myself to be interested in it, because I don't really believe in them very much. I think, in Britain, anyway, they seem to prove over and over there that people are not particularly trustworthy. They're always found to be trading political ideals in houses of Parliament and voting for each other on papers that going through to get them further up on the rungs of power. I found them to be fairly despicable people and so I'm not interested in them, really. But I am a member of the world and I'm interested in the world and I have a strong sense of
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
things that are right and wrong and I often think that politicians are not the people that end up making a difference. So, however, to be involved in this film, the political story in this film is that our ex-Prime Minister, the man who is held to the highest power in British politics, is going to be accountable for his actions, is going to be tried, and is going to have to make a testament or is going to have to sit in front of a committee and explain his decisions on why to bring Great Britain into the Iraq War and explain whether Great Britain, they gave orders to rendition flights on behalf of the United States Of America, should be able to touch down on British soil, and whether British forces were involved in torturing or interrogating prisoners on behalf of the United States Of America, which would also be an illegal war crime and he's going to have to make testament to that.""And if our film says that that's the way it should be and we should be involved in that, then I'm very happy to be involved in that, because that's the way it should be," he adds, "And I think that our politicians, even or especially those who hold the highest seats in government therefore shouldn't be considered to be above the law. And two weeks ago, our ex-British Prime Minister had to do that very thing and sit on a panel and explain himself. I don't know what will become of that or whether that will be something that makes a difference to the people of Great Britain to the people who lost their children fighting in that war or the innocent people that were killed in the war in Iraq or not, probably not. I think that it's still right that it should happen and it's a great shame that it's unlikely to ever happen here that were unlikely to see Bush ever having to do that, because he's probably out playing golf."
We wondered though McGregor believed that the The Ghost Writer was patriotic at its core.
"I have got no idea," Ewan replies, "That's a very interesting question. Probably not one for an actor. I think governments are
Ewan McGregor
"The Pen is Mightier than the Light Saber"
voted in by the people and the race to become in power, the things that are spoken about and the themes are talked about is very, very rarely the things that actually take place when that party gets into power.""I think people have got a right to be patriotic about their country and the pride they have in their nation, but it certainly doesn't have to be wrapped up in the party politics of that country," he continues, "In fact, probably, usually not, I would have thought. I think we elect politicians into power and they let us down and that's what happens. That's what's always happened and that's probably what's always has happened."
One thing Ewan though says is not on his agenda anytime soon is to write an autobiography of his own to have his own "Ghost" assist him with.
"I haven't thought about it, no," he says, "I know I haven't. I'd be interested in trying to write stories. Doug Bogart wrote some really beautiful stories. He wrote, in his latter or later years, he wrote some really nice novels and I like that as an actor who ended up writing that way. I think that's nice."
"I thought, sure, I'd be a very interesting person to read about, probably not really," McGregor continues, "I quite like people who write their autobiographies, that people find them in the attic after they die and they expose themselves as being horrible monsters or they have fifteen wives or something in secret. I don't know. I like people who've exposed themselves after they've died. But I don't really got anything to talk about, it'd be really boring. But anyway, I'd probably give my critique to some other people in the meantime. Maybe I can write this whole crock of shit and just leave it there."
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