Ewan Mcgregor Quotes

I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented.

I was with a friend of mine recently who was dying and while he was lying there with his family around his bed, I just knew that was it, that was the best you can hope for in life - to have your family and the people who love you around you at the end.

He`s quite extraordinary with his moves and spins. I think he was a baton girl in a past life [on his co-star Hayden Christensen].

I really want to play Princess Leia. Stick some big pastries on my head. Now that would be interesting.

Ultimately, you have to not worry about people thinking you should have played him differently. You're the one playing the part so it has to be yours.

A lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should do something else first, so they've got something to fall back on. It doesn't work like that, as far as I'm concerned.

The beautiful thing about it is that no two directors or actors work the same way. You also learn not to be afraid of discussion and conflict.

I started watching golf for the first time yesterday. I`m really worried about myself. I was actually enjoying it.

Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get any better than this?

I`ve got a black woolen hat and it`s got Pervert written across the front of it. It`s the name of the clothing label. And I was with my wife and my baby at the supermarket and I didn`t think. I just put my hat on Clara`s head, because it was cold. And the looks. I couldn`t figure out why I was getting death looks. And then I realized my 10-month old baby`s wearing a hat with the word Pervert written on it and these people were like, `There`s Satan! There`s Satan out with his kid!` And then I made a point of her wearing it every time we went there.

I'm fiercely proud to be Scottish.

I won`t buy into the Hollywood thing...I want to be in good movies.

What matters most with any regimen, whether it's to lose weight or stop drinking or smoking, is your willingness to seek help and your desire to say 'no more.

I had extra thick light sabers because mine kept getting bent. I'd be halfway through a fight and it would be like 'Oops, sorry! Mine's bent again!

People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, `What? You`re married?` Strange reaction to have. Proves what people`s ideas about marriage are. `We`re having a baby.` `What?` As if it`s the end of the world. Of course, it`s the start of a brilliant world.

...as an actor there`s nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It`s so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head.

No, I`m putting it away, trying to buy a house for my family. The goal is to use the money to move into a big house, so my daughter can have a garden.

If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place.

I got married because I fell in love with this woman. I had a baby with her because we wanted to have children. But that's not because of some philosophical ideal at all, no.

Then one day, when you least expect it, the great adventure finds you.

Seasons may change winter to spring, but I love you until the end of time Come what may, come what may, I will love you until my dying day Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste, it all revolves around you. And there’s no mountain too high no river too wide Sing out this song and I’ll be there by your side Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide But I love you until the end of time

Troy’s girlfriend, Sandra, brought them all pizza that night, and when she got there she joined the dramatic re-enactment. She said they had to rewind so she could elaborate for Elena on how dashing Obi-Wan was. “Ewan McGregor,” she groaned. “I made Troy grow a beard after the second movie.” “I also grew a Padawan braid,” Troy said.

When passion meets inspiration, obsession is born.

When I’m given a role, the first thing I do is read the play over and over again. I scour the script and write down everything the character says about himself and everything that everyone else says about him. I immerse myself in my character and imagine what it might be like to be that person. When I played Cassio in Othello I imagined what it would be like to be a lieutenant in the Venetian navy in 1604. I sat down with Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor and together we decided that Othello, Iago and Cassio had soldiery in their bones. I took from the script that Cassio was talented and ambitious, with no emotional or physical guard - and that’s how I played the part. For me, acting is about recreating the circumstances that would make me feel how my character is feeling. In the dressing room, I practise recreating those circumstances in my head and I try to not get in the way of myself. For example, in act two of Othello, when Cassio is manipulated to fight Roderigo and loses his rank, some nights I would burst into tears; other nights I wouldn’t but I would still feel the same emotion, night after night. Just as in life, the way we respond to catastrophe or death will be different every time because the process is unconscious. By comparison, in Chekhov’s Ivanov I played the young doctor, Lvov. Lvov was described as “a prig and a bigot … uprightness in boots … tiresome … completely sincere”. His emotions were locked away. I worked around the key phrase: “Forgive me, I’m going to tell you plainly.” I practised speaking gravely and sincerely without emotion and I actually noticed how that carried over into my personal life: when I played the open-hearted Cassio, I felt really free; when I played the pent-up Lvov, I felt a real need to release myself from the shackles of that character. It’s exhilarating to act out the emotions of a character - it’s a bit like being a child again. You flex the same muscles that you did when you pretended to be a cowboy or a policeman: acting is a grown-up version of that with more subtlety and detail. You’re responding with real emotions to imaginary situations. When I’m in a production I never have a day when I haven’t laughed, cried or screamed. There are times when I wake up stiff from emotional exhaustion. Film is a much more intimate and thoughtful medium than theatre because of the proximity of the camera. The camera can read your thoughts. On stage, if you have a moment of vulnerability you can hide it from the other actors; on film, the camera will see you feel that emotion and try to suppress it. Similarly, if you’re pretending to feel something that isn’t there, it won’t be believable.

He believes that the salmon and its long journey through endless oceans back to its home river is, in some strange way, a symbol of his own journey to become closer to his God. You know, a few hundred years ago, the sheikh might have been called a saint, if there are saints in Islam?

I argued that such an approach stood logic on its head. All disasters, all loss, all suffering, demonstrate that there cannot possibly be a God, for why would a deity who is omnipotent create a universe so prone to disaster and accident? Religious faith, I argued, was invented in order to pacify the grieving multitudes and ensure they did not ask the really difficult questions, which if answered, would tend to lead to progress.

We'll get there!

How was I supposed to know Jesus was brown?” replied Private Daniels with labored breath, dodging mortar explosions. “Blame Caucasian society for that shit, not me! Sunday School told me he looked like bearded Ewan McGregor, not the reanimated corpse of Osama bin Laden floating through the fucking sky! I thought he was coming to get us and I panicked!

Faith comes before hope, and hope before love.

As I write this entry in my diary, I myself feel like a diary which has been left out in the rain, from which the moisture has washed away the cramped inky writing, the record of thousands of days and nights, leaving only a blank and sodden page.

The theater’s stilted, matter-of-fact air makes me capable of clear thought. Ewan McGregor’s feckless, loose kindness reminds me of my brother, though in this moment everything does. I remember Tom’s wedding to Sara Something, when I was twenty-nine and he was thirty-two. He overdosed, survived. His tuxedo shirt slit down the middle by the EMTs, the pulsing of his blood over his chest. I wasn’t nice about it. It came at the end of years of unanswered messages, sudden criticisms, distracted tones. I left him at the hospital, ate vanilla wafers in my parked car. After that we didn’t speak. Ewan McGregor finds himself, when on the precipice of connection, lacking. He does what he thinks is his best.

Parecia que nada se fazia na Mongólia sem um brinde de vodka. De todas as tradições russas que os sovietes tinham exportado para os seus satélites, era vergonhoso que a que prevalecia fosse a vodka a qual, antigamente, nem sequer fazia parte da sua cultura.

Trata-se de uma aventura, não de um pacote de férias. E as aventuras não são aventuras se não houver um certo grau de perigo e incerteza.

Fazer filmes é uma experiência fantástica, mas os pormenores técnicos são mortalmente enfadonhos. É uma chatice salpicada de momentos vibrantes.

Andava tão em baixo que tinha perdido a confiança e já sentia o estômago às reviravoltas perante a perspetiva das estradas no Cazaquistão, Mongólia e Sibéria. Quanto a mim, esses três nomes representavam a parte fundamental da nossa aventura e só poderíamos voltar a respirar de alívio quando a tivéssemos ultrapassado.

Não nos conheciam de lado nenhum, mas ofereciam-nos, a nós e aos nossos quatro amigos, um lauto jantar e um lugar onde dormir. Se alguém me aparecesse assim de imprevisto em casa, não o acolheria certamente da mesma maneira.

Ele tinha-nos sugerido que fôssemos todos a uma sauna e eu pensei que devia ser o que os ucranianos costumavam fazer depois do trabalho, mas vieram-me à cabeça outros pensamentos. Se se tratasse apenas de uma sauna, não teria quaisquer problemas. Mas podia significar tanta coisa mais e eu não queria dar por mim numa situação dessas. Nem pensar.

Após a atenção mediática e as escoltas da Polícia, aquele isolamento e serenidade eram uma bênção. Pouco importava que não tomássemos banho há já uns dias. Para dizer a verdade, havia uma parte de rapazinho em mim que estava toda excitada com isso. Nunca me senti tão bem por estar todo sujo.

Apontaram para o ecrã e, depois, para nós. Acenámos com a cabeça. Não encararam aquilo de modo tão estranho como eu pensei. Pareceu-lhes até bastante natural. Dávamos a volta ao mundo, estávamos em casa deles e aparecíamos na televisão. Era tão simples quanto isso.

Não havia qualquer dúvida que, se ele me tivesse batido diretamente na roda, eu teria sido projetado para debaixo do carro e atropelado. Poderia muito bem ter morrido. Tínhamos passado pelas mais terríveis condições rodoviárias do mundo e acabáramos por ter o nosso primeiro acidente numa estrada canadiana…

Talvez o facto de viver numa grande cidade como Londres me levasse a desconfiar de estranhos, hábito que queria perder.

Se os mortos não estavam contrariados por ter os ossos empilhados na parede do fundo, suponho que também não se ralariam em ser usados como artigos de decoração. Era como o sonho erótico de um assassino em série, pensamento que me tirou logo o apetite para o almoço.

Your country is ridden with class prejudices.