‘I always thought it would be amazing to be the first person to play a role’: Ewan McGregor on his return to the UK stage

In September last year, it was announced that Ewan McGregor, the 54-year-old Scottish actor, had been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The news item happened to pop up on the feed of Michael Grandage, the theatre director who worked with McGregor in the mid-2000s on two productions,Guys and DollsandOthello, both under the Donmar Warehouse umbrella. “I thought, ‘Oh God, how brilliant is that!’” exclaims Grandage, who is 62 and since 2012 has been the artistic director of theMichael Grandage Company. “We hadn’t been in touch for a long time and I just thought that I’d send him a text, because it’s a big well done. It’s not something that a lot of people get, actually. I was looking up whohasn’tgot one…”Grandage and McGregor, who are sitting side by side in a rehearsal space in central London, steal a glance at each other and erupt, simultaneously, in loud howls.McGregor was in Los Angeles, where he has mainly lived since 2008, when he received the text. But he had spent part of the summer in Scotland, where he has a home in Perthshire, and for the flight back he had grabbed a play from his bookshelf, a gift from his wife, the actor Mary Elizabeth Winstead. “I thought, ‘I haven’t read a play in years,’” he recalls. “And it was Ibsen’sThe Master Builder. I’d never read Ibsen, and God, I loved it. So when I got my congratulations for the star from Michael, I replied saying, ‘Oh, that’s very kind. Thank you very much. I’ve just readThe Master Builderfor fun. I must be wanting to go back on stage…’”Grandage insists, with a smirk, that he wasn’t fishing. “I’d watch that amazingHalstonseries and think, ‘Oh, he’s doing that massive bloody Netflix series now… then he’s doingObi-Wan Kenobi[on Disney+].’ I’m not going to disturb him. He’ll come back when he’s ready.” But, serendipitously, Grandage had a play on his desk:My Master Builder, a new work by US playwright Lila Raicek, which is described as being a “conversation” with the 1892 Henrik Ibsen play. Did McGregor want to look at it? Yes, he very much did.And so here we are, cramped in an L-shaped room that normally does service as a makeup space. McGregor, in earthy colours and natural fibres, is getting stuck into an instant coffee and a KitKat; Grandage, all in blue, wears a corduroy blazer and has gravity-defying hair.My Master Builderopens at London’s Wyndham’s theatre this month and runs until mid-summer. “Normally these things take years, or a year at least,” says Grandage. “This whole turnaround was just weeks, which is extraordinary.”View image in fullscreenMcGregor with Jenna Russell in Guys and Dolls at the Piccadilly theatre in 2005.Photograph: Donald Cooper/AlamyAt a time when you can hardly step foot in the West End without tripping over a Tom Hiddleston or a Brie Larson, the return of McGregor to the stage is still an event that would jump to the top of your news feed. He has been an indelible presence in British culture for more than 30 years, ever since makingShallow Grave(1994) andTrainspotting(1996) with director Danny Boyle. He went global in the late-1990s with a run of three Star Wars prequels and Baz Luhrmann’sMoulin Rouge!with Nicole Kidman in 2001. And the output has never slowed or dropped off:Halston, the biopic of the US fashion designer, won him an Emmy in 2021; the miniseriesObi-Wan Kenobibroke Disney+ viewing records in 2022.You’re not a film actor, and you’re not a television actor, and you’re not a theatre actor. You’re just an actorEwan McGregorThere is also scarcity at work here. McGregor has not appeared in a UK theatre since 2008, a gap of 17 years; he did perform the Tom Stoppard playThe Real Thingon Broadway in 2014, opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal, but that was more than a decade ago. Still, McGregor very much does not accept the line that he is the latest Hollywood star slumming it on the London stage for a few months. He started out working at the Perth Repertory theatre when he was 16; he then studied drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. “You’re not a film actor, and you’re not a television actor, and you’re not a theatre actor,” he says. “You’re just an actor.”McGregor continues: “To me, coming back to the theatre isn’t like, ‘Oh, here’s this movie actor on stage…’ I’ve always found that a little bit offensive. And I’ve always found the first few minutes on stage in London, I can feel that in the room. After a few minutes, you can feel the audience go, ‘Oh, OK,’ then you can get on with it. And that’s partly why I wanted to work in New York, because I thought they might be different there. And I did achieve that.”McGregor cracks that boyish grin, his blue eyes alert and twinkling. “Because half the audience were asleep half the time. So it wasn’t quite as scary somehow.”Grandage, who has directed innumerable high-profile productions, featuring the likes of Kidman, Jude Law and Daniel Radcliffe, nods his head in agreement. “Well, it’s not a film star coming back in your case, because you kept at it,” he says. “You’ve done it over the years and you trained, that’s the other thing. There’s only ever a dialogue about it when somebody doesn’t work; when, universally, the critics and audiences go, ‘This person, something’s not right here.’ And quite frequently it is the people who are trying to do a play when they haven’t done a play before.“What usually happens then is a debate starts, articles get written and it goes away as soon as somebody who does it frequently comes back and shows you can be a film actor, a television actor and a stage actor. Because, as Ewan says, you’re an actor.”When we meet, Grandage and McGregor are in the second week of a five-week rehearsal block. Such extensive preparations are pretty much unheard of in the world of film. ForShallow GraveandTrainspotting, Boyle insisted on a week, which was unusually long. “We lived together forShallow Graveand we’d all go to see films at night,” says McGregor. “Then withTrainspottingit was the same. And I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that since.”A big pull for returning to theatre then was what McGregor is doing today: breaking down scenes with actors (inMy Master Builder, his co-stars includeElizabeth Debicki, fromThe CrownandThe Night Manager) and the chance to deeply interrogate a text. “On film, it’s very often the case that you’re learning the lines in the car on the way in,” he says. “Then you get on set, everyone’s got coffee, and you just sort of put it together, and before you know it: ‘Action!’ On the whole, 99% of the directors you’re working for now are just happy to see that it works. And that’s it.”View image in fullscreenMcGregor playing Iago to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Othello at the Donmar in 2007.Photograph: Donald Cooper/AlamyMcGregor recalls his early days at the Perth theatre with clear fondness. He struggled at school, which was awkward because both his parents were teachers (his father at the independent Morrison’s Academy, which he attended, and where his older brother, who went on to become a fighter pilot in the RAF, had been head boy). “All I wanted to do was music and art, and they said I had to choose one, so I sat in a physics class pretending I was taking notes,” he says. “I got more and more depressed and more and more in trouble. And it was probably embarrassing for my dad.”Then, one night, on a rainy drive into Crieff, McGregor’s mum said he could leave school if he wanted. “And I went, ‘What? Fuck, that’s it,’” he says, eyes wide. “So I didn’t go back, and I started phoning the theatre, where I’d been trying to get a job since I was 14.” His first gig was as an extra in the courtroom scene in the Santha Rama Rau playA Passage to India, but he hung around, made himself useful. “I’d take the sets down, I’d help to put the sets up. And occasionally they gave me a few lines. That’s where I started.”There’s also obvious affection when McGregor talks about his previous collaborations with Grandage. The director cast him first as Sky Masterston in a 2005 revival ofGuys and Dolls, and then in 2007 as Iago inOthello. “I’ve had some of the best experiences of my working life with Michael,” says McGregor. “Two completely different – couldn’t think of two more different – plays. But I got to play Iago and that was extraordinary.”“It’s one of the biggest parts in Shakespeare,” Grandage notes.“Fucking hell, quite a biggie,” says McGregor. “Terrifying, but I loved it. And I remember when it finished, I felt like I took a huge, huge weight off my shoulders that I’d been carrying for a long time. Just the pressure of it was massive. Even though I loved it, it was a great relief to stop.”It’s a recurring theme in McGregor’s career, his apparent suspicion of a comfort zone. Perhaps the most obvious examples are his global motorbike odysseys with his friend Charley Boorman. It started in 2004 withLong Way Round, a 19,000-mile journey from London to New York, via Russia and Mongolia. Next month, a fourth edition calledLong Way Home, a two-month trip from Scotland through Europe to the Arctic Circle and then back to London, airs on Apple TV+.The takeaway from these adventures invariably is how unspoilt and gung-ho McGregor remains. I tell him that, 20 years on, I still remember him eating testicle soup in Mongolia. “Did he do that?” asks Grandage, shocked.“I did do that,” McGregor replies. “I ate mine. Charley didn’t get his down, Charley’s came flying straight back out again. But I got mine down, it was all right.”This memory segues into McGregor reminiscing about being in “the middle of fucking nowhere” in far-eastern Russia on the same trip, travelling for days with the landscape barely changing, not seeing a soul. “Then there was a bus stop that was a toilet,” he says. “We opened the door, and there was a wooden toilet, but there was a pyramid of poo coming out of it. It filled up, and they didn’t stop pooing on it. But I was thinking: ‘How did they get up the top?’ You’d have to be standing up like…”McGregor, who has previous in his film career with horrible toilets, clambers up on to a kitchen counter and puts his hand above his head: at least three metres high. Grandage is bent double, laughing. “Anyway, we were just all taking pictures of each other next to it,” he says, miming a thumbs-up. “That was not a comfortable toilet.”The Master Builderis a late-period Ibsen play that is commonly accepted to be at least partially autobiographical. It concerns Halvard Solness, a middle-aged man who runs an architecture practice – he’s a builder, not an architect though, because he’s not fully qualified – in a small town in Norway. Solness is much in demand, but also tetchy, vain and fearful of being usurped by the dreaded “younger generation”. His inevitable unravelling comes with the surprise arrival of a 23-year-old woman called Hilda, whom he met briefly a decade before.My Master Builder, the new play, is set in the Hamptons in the present day on 4 July and centres on an architect, Henry Solness (McGregor). There’s a big party to celebrate his latest project, which is crashed by Mathilde (Debicki), a former student and fling of Henry’s. “I’ve done a few Ibsens before,” says Grandage. “And it’s not a version of, and it’s not a translation of, and it’s not a … what’s the other one? Adaptation! Weirdly, it’s its own thing, it’s its own new play.”View image in fullscreenMcGregor as Renton in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996).Photograph: Channel Four Films/Allstar“When I read Lila’s play, I realised she’s just brought it into 2025,” says McGregor. “The sexual politics of Ibsen’s play are not turned on their head, but fleshed out into our reality. So it’s not just a poor old master builder who’s moaning about … ” He smiles: “I shouldn’t paraphrase the themes of Ibsen’s plays! But it’s fleshed out for a modern audience, and the sexual politics are much more in your face, I suppose.”Nobody retires in our industry. We don’t retire. The word doesn’t exist!Michael GrandageFor both McGregor and Grandage, the fact thatMy Master Builderis a new play was a key part of the appeal. “This may be a little romantic, but everything was a new play once,” says Grandage. “The best thing about a new play is that there’s an audience at some point who don’t know what happens next. And you can never, ever get that back once it’s happened.”“When you open a script up, it lists who the original cast were,” adds McGregor. “And I always thought: ‘God, that would be amazing to be the first ever person to play a role.’ Then this happened, just by chance and by luck and by hook and crook.”As men at the top of their respective fields, do McGregor and Grandage understand Solness nervously looking over his shoulder at the next generation? “One of the great challenges of ageing, I suppose, is how you deal with it,” says Grandage. “There’s something very interesting happening at the moment for me. It’s a bit of a shock, actually. But our lighting designer, Paule Constable, who is one of the great lighting designers, and who Ewan and I worked with onOthello, she has decided to retire. Well, nobody retires in our industry. We don’t retire. The word doesn’t exist! I know Daniel Day-Lewis retired officially, but he’s the only one I can think of.”McGregor has five children and thinks that demystifies the fear of being usurped by young upstarts. “No, I always feel like I’m totally current to them and then I’m reminded by them that I’m not,” he says. “But because I’ve got kids in several of the generations – my eldest, Clara, is almost 30 years old and my youngest is three, and I’ve got many in between – I don’t feel that.”Grandage can’t resist a playful dig. “Of course, they are reminding you you’ve been around a bit when they give you things like a Hollywood star of fame,” he says.“Or the lifetime achievement award…” McGregor groans.“Theawfullifetime achievement award,” Grandage agrees. “It’s like, ‘Christ, is that it?’”For now though, both men seem determined to keep testing their limits.“I don’t look out of my eyes as somebody in their mid-fifties,” says McGregor, readying himself to return to the rehearsal room. “I don’t feel that way inside.”My Master Builderruns atWyndham’s theatrein London from 17 April to 12 July.Long Way Homeis on Apple TV+ from 9 May