Ewan McGregor

Ewan Gordon McGregor (born March 31, 1971) is a Scottish actor who has starred in various film and musical roles. His first professional role was a leading role in the British Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar (1993), followed by the BBC 1 series Scarlett and Black (1993), with Rachel Weisz. He made his film debut in Bill Forsyth’s Being Human (1994), with Robin Williams, John Turturro, Bill Nighy, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Carlyle, and Theresa Russell; followed by his first collaboration with filmmaker Danny Boyle in the film Shallow Grave (1994), with Christopher Eccleston and Kerry Fox. He would play collaborate with Boyle again, playing heroin addict Mark Renton in Trainspotting (1996), with Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Carlyle, Shirley Henderson, James Cosmo, and Kelly Macdonald; its sequel T2 Trainspotting (2017), with much of the same cast; and A Life Less Ordinary (1997) with Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo, Ian Holm, and Dan Hedaya.

McGregor is probably known for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas‘s Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005), collectively with Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz, Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, and Terence Stamp. He reprised the role on the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), with Christensen, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Moses Ingram, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell and Benny Safdie.

Other films in the 1990s include Blue Juice (1995), with Sean Pertwee, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Steven Mackintosh, Peter Gunn, and Heathcote Williams; Peter Greenway’s The Pillow Book (1996), with Vivian Wu; Douglas McGrath’s Emma (1996), with Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Alan Cumming, Jeremy Northam, Greta Scacchi, Juliet Stevenson, and Polly Walker; Mark Herman’s Brassed Off (1996), with Pete Postlethwaite and Tara Fitzgerald; Nightwatch (1997), with Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin, and Nick Nolte; The Serpent’s Kiss (1997), with Postlethwaite, Scacchi, and Richard E. Grant; Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998), with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Collette, Christian Bale, and Eddie Izzard; Little Voice (1998), with Jane Horrocks, Michael Caine, Brenda Blethyn, and Jim Broadbent; Rogue Trader (1999), with Anna Friel; and Stephen Elliott‘s Eye of the Beholder (1999), with Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, k.d. Lang, Jason Priestley, and Geneviève

Films in the early 2000s include Nora (2000), with Susan Lynch; Baz Luhrmann’s musical film Moulin Rouge! (2001), with Nicole Kidman, John Leguizamo, Broadbent, and Richard Roxburgh; Ridley Scott‘s Black Hawk Down (2001), with Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner, Sam Shepard, and Tom Hardy; Peyton Reed’s Down with Love (2003), with Renée Zellweger, David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson, and Tony Randall; Young Adam (2003), with Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Ewan Stewart, and Emily Mortimer; Tim Burton‘s Big Fish (2003), with Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Alison Lohman, Robert Guillaume, Marion Cotillard, Steve Buscemi, and Danny DeVito; The Island (2005), with Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Buscemi, snd Michael Clarke Duncan; and Marc Forster’s Stay (2005), with Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, and Bob Hoskins.

Films in the mid to late 2000s include Stormbreaker (2006), with Alex Pettyfer, Mickey Rourke, Nighy, Sophie Okonedo, Alicia Silverstone, Sarah Bolger, and Stephen Fry; Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006), with Adrian Lester, Hardy, Andrew Lincoln, Catherine Tate, Eileen Atkins, Gina McKee, Holly Aird, Hugh Bonneville, Sophie Okonedo, and Douglas Hodge; Miss Potter (2006), with Zellweger, Lloyd Owen, Bill Paterson, and Emily Watson; Woody Allen‘s Cassandra’s Dream (2007), with Hayley Atwell, Colin Farrell, Sally Hawkins, and Tom Wilkinson; Incendiary (2008), with Michelle Williams and Matthew Macfadyen; Deception (2008), with Hugh Jackman; Ron Howard‘s Angels and Demons (2009), with Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, and Armin Mueller-Stahl; I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009), with Jim Carrey, Rodrigo Santoro, Antoni Corone, and Leslie Mann; The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009), with George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey; and Mira Nair‘s Amelia (2009), with Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Eccleston, and Joe Anderson.

Films in the early 2010s include Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer (2010), with Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Jon Bernthal, David Rintoul, Robert Pugh, and Eli Wallach; Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), with Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes, Rhys Ifans, Asa Butterfield, and Maggie Smith; Beginners (2010), with Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, and Goran Višnjić; Perfect Sense (2011), with Eva Green, Bremner, Stephen Dillane, and Connie Nielsen; Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire (2011), with Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas; Lasse Hallström’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2012), with Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Amr Waked; The Impossible (2012), with Watts and Tom Holland; Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), with Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, and Nighy; August: Osage County (2013), with Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepard, and Misty Upham; and Son of a Gun (2014), with Brenton Thwaites, Alicia Vikander, and Jacek Koman.

Films in the mid to late 2010s include Mortdecai (2015), with Johnny Depp, Paltrow, Olivia Munn, Paul Bettany, and Jeff Goldblum; Last Days in the Desert (2015), with Tye Sheridan, Ciarán Hinds, and Ayelet Zurer; Miles Ahead (2015), with Don Cheadle (who also directed), Emayatzy Corinealdi, Keith Stanfield, and Michael Stuhlbarg; Jane Got a Gun (2016), with Portman, Edgerton, Noah Emmerich, Rodrigo Santoro, and Boyd Holbrook; Our Kind of Traitor (2016), with Naomie Harris, Skarsgård, Damian Lewis, and Alicia von Rittberg; his feature directorial debut American Pastoral (2016), with Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, Peter Riegert, Rupert Evans, Uzo Aduba, Molly Parker and David Strathairn; Zoe (2018), with Léa Seydoux, Christina Aguilera, Theo James, Rashida Jones, Miranda Otto, and Matthew Gray Gubler; Mark Forster’s Christopher Robin (2018), with Atwell, and the voices of Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Nick Mohammed, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Sara Sheen, and Toby Jones; and Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep (2019), with Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, and Cliff Curtis.

Films in the 2020s include Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey (2020), with Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (whom he married in 2022), Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco, and Ali Wong; The Birthday Cake (2021), with Shiloh Fernandez, Val Kilmer, Ashley Benson, Lorraine Bracco, David Mazouz, William Fichtner, Luis Guzmán, and Paul Sorvino; Rodrigo García’s Raymond & Ray (2022), with Ethan Hawke, Maribel Verdú, and Sophie Okonedo; Bleeding Love (2023), with real life daughter Clara McGregor, Kim Zimmer, Jake Weary, Devyn McDowell, and Vera Bulder; and Mother, Couch (2023), with Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell, Ellen Burstyn, Lara Flynn Boyle, F. Murray Abraham and Lake Bell.

McGregor has also voiced in the films Robots (2005), with Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey and Williams; Valiant (2005), with Ricky Gervais, Tim Curry, Broadbent, Hugh Laurie, John Cleese, John Hurt, Pip Torrens, Rik Mayall, and Olivia Williams; Jackboots and Whitehall (2010), with the voices of Rosamund Pike, Cumming, Timothy Spall, Wilkinson, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Richard E. Grant, Pam Ferris, Richard O’Brien, Richard Griffiths, Hugh Fraser, Tobias Menzies, Stephen Merchant, and Dominic West; Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast (2017), with Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, with the voices Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, and Thompson; and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022), with Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Christoph Waltz, and Swinton.

In 2018 McGregor won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film for his performance as brothers in the third season of FX anthology series Fargo (2017), with Carrie Coon, Winstead, Goran Bogdan, and David Thewlis; and received Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy for both Moulin Rouge! and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. McGregor has also starred in theatre productions of Guys and Dolls (2005–2007) and Othello (2007–2008). He was ranked number 36 on Empire magazine’s “The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list in 1997. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, McGregor was named the fourth most influential person in British culture.

McGregor has been involved in charity work and has served as an ambassador for UNICEF UK since 2004. In 2013 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to drama and charity. In 2016 he received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award. He took American citizenship in 2016.

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) – directed by Renny Rye – miniseries
Scarlet and Black (1993) – directed by Ben Bolt – miniseries
Family Style (1993) – directed by Justin Chadwick – short
Being Human (1994) – directed by Bill Forsyth
Shallow Grave (1994) – directed by Danny Boyle
Doggin’ Around (1994) – directed by Desmond Davis – TV movie
Blue Juice (1995) – directed by Carl Prechezer
Trainspotting (1996) – directed by Danny Boyle
The Pillow Book (1996) – directed by Peter Greenway
Emma (1996) – directed by Douglas McGrath
Brassed Off (1996) – directed by Mark Herman
Nightwatch (1997) – directed by Ole Bornedal
The Serpent’s Kiss (1997) – directed by Philippe Rousselot
A Life Less Ordinary (1997) – directed by Danny Boyle
Velvet Goldmine (1998) – directed by Todd Haynes
Little Voice (1998) – directed by Mark Herman
Welcome to Hollywood (1998) – directed by Tony Markes & Adam Rifkin – cameo as himself
Desserts (1999) – directed by Jeff Stark – short
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)* – directed by George Lucas
Rogue Trader (1999) – directed by James Dearden
Eye of the Beholder (1999) – directed by Stephan Elliott
Tube Tales (1999) – director only – other shirts directed by Amy Jenkins, Stephen Hopkins, Menhaj Huda, Charles McDougall, Bob Hoskins, Jude Law, Armando Iannucci, & Gaby Dellal – anthology
Anno Domini (2000) – directed by Jeff Stark – short
Nora (2000) – directed by Pat Murphy
Moulin Rouge (2001) – directed by Baz Luhrmann
Black Hawk Down (2001) – directed by Ridley Scott
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)* – directed by George Lucas
Solid Geometry (2002) – directed by Denis Lawson – TV short
Down with Love (2003)* – directed by Peyton Reed
Young Adam (2003) – directed by David Mackenzie
Faster (2003) – directed by Mark Neale – narrator – documentary
Big Fish (2003)* – directed by Tim Burton
Spooks and Creeps (2003) – directed by Michael Harveky, Michael Horowitz, Rick Nahmias, Gareth Smith, & Samuel Vartek – anthology
Robots (2005) – directed by Chris Wedge & Carlos Saldanha
Valiant (2005) – directed by Gary Chapman
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)* – directed by George Lucas
The Island (2005) – directed by Michael Bay
Stay (2005) – directed by Marc Forster
Stormbreaker (2006) – directed by Geoffrey Sax
Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006) – directed by Ed Blum
Miss Potter (2006) – directed by Chris Noonan
Cassandra’s Dream (2007) – directed by Woody Allen
Incendiary (2008) – directed by Sharon Maguire
Deception (2008) – directed by Marcel Langenegger
Angels & Demons (2009) – directed by Ron Howard
I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009) – directed by John Requa & Glenn Ficarra
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)* – directed by Grant Heslov
Amelia (2009) – directed by Mira Nair
The Ghost Writer (2010) – directed by Roman Polanski
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010) – directed by Susanna White
Jackboots on Whitehall (2010) – directed by Edward & Rory McHenry
Beginners (2010) – directed by Mike Mills
Perfect Sense (2011) – directed by David Mackenzie
Fastest (2011) – directed by Mark Neale – narrator – documentary
Haywire (2011) – directed by Steven Soderbergh
Salmon Fishing in Yemen (2012) – directed by Lasse Hallström
The Impossible (2012) – directed by J.A. Bayona
Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) – directed by Bryan Singer
August: Osage County (2013) – directed by John Wells
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)* – directed by Seth MacFarlane – cameo
Son of a Gun (2014) – directed by Julius Avery
Mortdecai (2015) – directed by David Koepp
Last Days in the Desert (2015) – directed by Rodrigo García
Miles Ahead (2015) – directed by Don Cheadle
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)* – directed by J.J. Abrams – voice cameo
Jane Got a Gun (2016) – directed by Gavin O’Connor
Our Kind of Traitor (2016) – directed by Susanna White
American Pastoral (2016) – also director
Now You See It (2017) – directed by Rebecca Manley – short
T2 Trainspotting (2017) – directed by Danny Boyle
Czerwony punkt (2017) – directed by Patryk Vega – short
Beauty and the Beast (2017)* – directed by Bill Condon
Zoe (2018) – directed by Drake Doremus
Christopher Robbin (2018) – directed by Marc Forster
Doctor Sleep (2019) – directed by Mike Flanagan
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)* – directed by J.J. Abrams – voice cameo
Birds of Prey: and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)* – directed by Cathy Yan
The Birthday Cake (2021) – directed by Jimmy Giannopoulos
Raymond & Ray (2022) – directed by Rodrigo García
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinnochio (2022)* – directed by Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson
Bleeding Love (2023) – directed by Emma Westenberg
Mother, Couch (2023) – directed by Niclas Larsson
Flowervale Street (2025) – directed by David Robert Mitchell

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