“All the girls have been coming up to him and saying, ‘Ewan McGregor, we’re in love with you.  You’re married and have a baby – it’s not fair.’  He has a fun, sophomoric sense of humor – we joke about having gas!  And he makes acting seem so easy: he doesn’t beat himself up over it.”
   --Cameron Diaz

“Ewan McGregor is one of the very best young actors of his generation.  He is more talented than his American counterparts – the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.”
   --Barry Norman (British film critic)

“Unlike most children, Ewan didn’t need coaxing.  I wanted a New Testament story interspersed with Old Testament episodes.  That year the story was to be David and Goliath.  We had a large Sunday School, large enough to put together two armies – the Philistines and the Israelites.  In the part of Goliath we cast a tall lad with a spear and eventually out comes this tiny child with his sling and lops Goliath’s head off.  Ewan was the small child – David.  In my diary, I recorded that ‘wee Ewan McGregor was wonderful.’  Of course, it ran in the family.  His uncle Denis Lawson was in my Youth Fellowship thirty-odd years ago.  But I firmly believed that this child was obviously a little actor and would be recognized as such.  He was surely a natural.”
   --Reverend Henry Tait

“All the girls were after him.”
   --Vicky McNally (Ewan’s ex-girlfriend)

“It was thrilling that Ewan had picked up on what I was doing.  When he was auditioning for drama school I suggested a couple of speeches for him and did this emotion-memory experience with him.  I’m not a great believer in all that stuff but he’d had a run-in with a guy over a girl a few days before, so I got him to release his anger, which was quite impressive.  But I’d spotted something much earlier than that.  Ewan was a drummer in the school pipe band.  They were having a competition in the school one evening.  When it came to Ewan’s turn, he played his solo and I realized that he knew exactly what he was doing – he was drawing in an audience through his concentration.  Women like men when they look concentrated.  It’s something I’m very aware of on stage and I recognized it in Ewan immediately.  It’s a subtle and powerful way of transmitting sexuality.  That day I thought ‘Yes, this is a performer.’  We politely call it stage presence.  But actually it’s sex.”
   --Denis Lawson

“He [Ewan’s old agent] phoned our casting agent and said that he had newly signed a young actor and that we should see him.  Well, it was very late in the day, so to speak, but we asked Ewan to come along on the Saturday morning which he did and he read opposite me and the director and we were both extremely impressed.  Next I took him to our choreographer.  She gave Ewan a piece of music and the steps and as soon as he started, she and I looked at each other and winked.  He has a lovely singing voice and dances superbly.  We didn’t, however, want him to think that he had nothing more to do and so the choreographer put him fully through his paces.”
   --Rosemarie Whitman (producer of Lipstick on Your Collar)

“Private Hopper was not a simple role to cast.  He is a Jack the Lad – but he’s also more than that.  There is another side to him and the actor who would portray him also had to be able to sing and dance.  It was a difficult casting and we had screen-tested a lot of people, but when we say Ewan, he was the only one we wanted.  You take a chance, casting new blood.”
   --Rosemarie Whitman

“It was crucial to us that Ewan was up to this.  Lip-synch is enormously difficult to do and if you don’t get it exactly right, it blows the whole convention.  We’d had to find a young actor who could sing well, dance well, lip-synch perfectly and also more like Elvis Presley.”
   --Rosemarie Whitman

“He was great in the role.  He was also wonderful to work with – so fascinated by and eager to learn from watching the other more experienced actors.”
   --Rosemarie Whitman

“Ewan is a really courageous young man.  He was not at all put off with Dennis Potter being around – he was very courteous to Dennis.”
   --Rosemarie Whitman

“Sadly Ewan and I didn’t have a scene together but I well remember watching some rushes with Dennis Potter and me saying to Potter ‘You just can’t take your eyes off that lad.  When he’s on screen no one else is.’  Dennis replied ‘Right.  I do know how to pick ‘em, don’t I?’  He certainly did.”
   --Roy Hudd (Lipstick co-star)

“Ewan was clearly, even then, very talented.  It was so obvious to myself and to the director and that was why we were so disappointed at not being able to attract Press attention for the series.  They were just not interested in giving it promotion because it featured, as its main cast, four young actors.  I so wanted Lipstick On Your Collar to actively do something for Ewan.  We wanted it to be a bigger showcase for him, but it was a no-go with the press.”
   --Rosemarie Whitman

“We all hit it off but out of the cast, John Hannah, myself and Ewan particularly came together and worked in really close harmony and, I think, as a result we got it so right.  It was a nice play.  Hilary Norrish was a great director and had cast it herself.  From the start she knew the people she wanted for each role.  Everyone had to know their character but she also made notes, gave them to us to study and then it was a case of getting on and doing it.  Radio is very immediate.  You have to be up to it instantly and Ewan was.”
   --David Bannerman (Tragic Prelude co-star)

“Ewan knew I’d done a lot of radio and he would ask me plenty of questions, even down to which was the right side of the mike to use.  He really was an extremely pleasant and very ordinary young man.  The funny thing was, I’d been at drama school with Denis Lawson in Glasgow but at the time that we recorded this play I didn’t know that this was Denis’s nephew.”
   --David Bannerman

“Ewan is a terrific actor.  He is very fortunate in that from early on the camera clearly loved him.  On Being Human it became immediately obvious, and not just to me.  I vividly recall the scene where he was standing in a group of people and yet he was so prominent, to the point that I spoke to the cameraman and the production assistants about it.  We decided then that we ought to build up his part, specifically create more scenes for him, which we did and shot them.  When it came to the edit, however, these extra scenes were lacerated.  McGregor has the same quality that a certain select group of actors have.  Once you watch them they mesmerize you and you forget that you are watching an actor because they appeal to you personally.”
   --David Puttnam (Being Human producer)

“Ewan was under-used in the film [Being Human].  He was very good, which doesn’t often become apparent in such a tiny part as he had.  What was most noticeable about him was his general confidence.  He had very good discipline on set which, again, was surprising in such a young actor not long out of drama school.  He had a distinct air of assurance and took any direction in his stride.  He certainly did not suffer from nerves.”
   --Natasha Ross (Being Human production assistant)

“He was certainly ambitious and completely in love with film.  Off-set he was very much a young enthusiastic lad, yet we all got the distinct impression that he would much rather talk of movies and movie-making than charge off down the beach.”
   --Natasha Ross

“It may have been a big-budget Warner Brothers movie, but I must say a lot of the exterior facilities were exceptionally drab and the trailers were unspeakable.  We’d pass our spare time visiting fairs and some just went and got drunk in Marrakesh.  All of us had many a late boozy night and as for Ewan – he sings like the devil and will play the guitar at the drop of a hat.  We had a lot of good laughs.”
   --Jonathan Hyde (Being Human co-star)

“I first met Ewan the day after New Year’s Day and it was deep snow.  We all met for a read-through and it went fine.  Straightaway I found him extremely courteous, warm and nice to everybody.  He was never standoffish – very much part of the team.”
   --Isla Blair (What the Butler Saw co-star)

“There is a scene when Ewan has to run across the stage completely naked and then cover himself up with a policeman’s helmet.  I am stripped down to stockings and a flimsy black lacy petticoat and when you’re doing this kind of thing night after night, waiting together in the wings like this, then you get to know each other quite well!”
   --Isla Blair

“Ewan was fine, not at all bad – but it wasn’t his finest hour.  Having said that it wasn’t any of our finest hours.”
   --Isla Blair

“Ewan has great charm.  I used to give him a lift back to London at weekends.  Sometimes it was just the two of us…if we were alone he began to be able to tell me little personal things, secrets.  He was able to unburden himself at least a little.  But mostly we had a good laugh.  Both of us adore Billy Connolly’s humor and mostly we played his tapes and spent the entire journey to London in stitches.”
   --Isla Blair

“By the time the play’s run was coming to and end he was preparing for his next role back in television and I said to Jamie, ‘You know, there’s something about that Ewan.  There is no question that he is going to be a star.’  Sometimes you don’t need to be a great actor to have a star quality.  In Ewan, though, there was definitely an indefinable something and it’s not just because he’s got this slightly naughty, cheeky quality and a twinkle in his eyes.  He has a tenderness about him too.  Behind the toughs and the cynical guys he went on to portray in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting there is a vulnerability about him that’s very engaging.  He’s like this in real life as well as projecting it on screen.”
   --Isla Blair

“Let’s keep an eye on Ewan.  We could have seen the birth of a fine career.”
   --Peter Blacklock (Salisbury theatre critic)

“We searched far and wide for the right Julien Sorel and we had seen quite a few actors before Ewan bowled through the door and took both Ben Bolt and myself completely by surprise.  Bowled over indeed is the appropriate description.  I know he insists that he was nervous at his first interview and felt that because of that he hadn’t done well, but he had.  His is an interesting generation of actors but in Ewan we found that something extra that was needed, because the character of Julien Sorel required so many different things.  He is born a peasant but aspires to be a gentleman.  With Ewan I saw that earthiness and I knew that equally he could convey the stature required to carry off the pretence of being a gentleman.”
   --Ros Anderson (Scarlet And Black producer)

“It was a learning process for him, and it was a big thing to land on his shoulders when he did not have a lot of experience, but he showed great spirit.  He’s very intelligent but what came over strongly was how he brought so much energy to the part. One of the main themes is this young man sexually attracted to an older woman and he brought that earthy quality that I noticed at casting which effortlessly created the necessary understanding as to how this good and pure wife, who had never thought of straying, could be seduced by this passionate and intense young man.  For her it is a voyage of discovery.  For him it is social climbing.  He is very ambitious, tenacious, and Ewan was perfectly able to project that vaunting ambition, yet at the same time he managed to let the viewer see glimpses of another, more vulnerable side, just enough so that he managed not to come across as heartless, soulless and ruthless.”
   --Ros Anderson

“He was always laughing which was even more surprising since he didn’t much like the restraint of the costumes and there was a lot of heavy stuff in the role but he was a delight to work with.”
   --Ros Anderson

“He had put in a great deal of training for his riding and he had some difficult and demanding things to do.  The horseback sequences in Scarlet And Black were challenging for the horsemen and for the actors, and Ewan had to do both.  It was a great disappointment to him when he fell off his horse, particularly because he had prepared hard for that scene.  He loves taking on a challenge, though, and wanted to immediately do it again but I stepped in and said no.  There was a massive amount of action with the horsemen charging in all directions, carriages thundering around and cannons blasting away and it was then that his horse had thrown him.  He was so crestfallen that I wouldn’t let him do it again but it was my job to protect him as the star of the drama.  One of the stunt coordinators kept saying how Kevin Costner did all his own stunts in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves but I said, ‘Ewan’s my baby and I’m not having him hurt.’”
   --Ros Anderson

“There was one day of shooting when he was naked almost the entire day…. We had to do all sorts of other pick-up shots in different locations and he spent all the time in – mostly out – of dressing gowns and he made it all such a laugh, injecting a kind of naughtiness, as if it were streaking.  He wasn’t so comfortable when we had to get him to pose with Alice and Rachel for photographs, not with them undressed but in a state of disarray.  Posing was clearly different for him to the process of acting a part.”
   --Ros Anderson

“He is wonderfully sensitive to work with and picks everything up very quickly.  It was my job to teach him Latin.  I was his mentor and he had a great deal to say in Latin.  I taped it for Ewan to learn and it was difficult stuff, some of which, I may say, he had to carry off with an air of scorn and contempt, which is mighty hard.  Yet he picked it up perfectly and never once got so much as a syllable wrong.  Julien Sorel is one of the greatest parts in literature.  It’s often compared to Hamlet.  In the end he makes no effort to save himself from execution.  Throughout Ewan gave a quite astonishing performance.  For me he showed an extraordinary ease.  He has that light in his head that really great actors have.  It goes with an assumption, with no conceit, that he is going upwards.  There is no side to him, though.  He is very democratic, professionally.”
   --Joseph O’Conor (Scarlet & Black co-star)

“It was not just my decision, though, but also the producer’s and director’s.  But we all felt that we needed someone young, handsome and plausible.  Someone who could convey the impression we wanted of being really nice at face value but who was, underneath it all, a rather nasty piece of work, and Ewan carried this off most impressively.  Among the young actors available, we felt that he was the best and as it turned out he served the part well.”
   --Ted Childs (Kavanagh QC casting director)

“The undoubted highlight of Ewan’s performance was when we had some trouble in Oxford, when a large crane wouldn’t work and we lost nearly a whole day of filming.  In television, episodes are shot to very tight time-scales and because of the time lost due to this faulty crane we were really up against it.  The scene we had to do was the vital cross-examination by Geraldine James of Ewan in the witness box.  It was something like eleven pages of script, but they did it in one take.  And not only that but because of this pressure they brought immense dramatic tension to what was, anyway, the key scene.  We all held our breath while it was happening and marveled afterwards at what they had achieved, and that was besides being immensely grateful.”
   --Chris Kelley (Kavanagh QC producer)

“He has this incredible belief in himself and the strangest thing about it is that he is genuinely modest with it.  He had excelled as David Armstrong and it was perfectly plain to me that he was going to be a star.  On the way back from Alison Steadman’s house one day, I told Ewan so.”
   --Chris Kelley

“I had no part in the casting, but one day they told me Jimmy had been cast.  They were very excited.  I said ‘Who’s going to do it?’  And they said, ‘A young Scottish lad called Ewan who’s just completed a feature film that was awaiting release called Shallow Grave.’  I asked what else he’d been in and the casting people mentioned Lipstick on Your Collar.  I remembered him from that, hair slicked back and handsome, not at all the character in Family Style – so I had my doubts…. Then the day before shooting began I was taken to Boston Spa to meet the cast.  I walked into the pub with Justin and there sat Ewan looking exactly like the Jimmy I had imagined and to top it off, he was drinking a pint of best bitter!  He was really in character.  I joined him in a pint but was too in awe to speak.  He was already dressed for the part and had long unkempt hair like Jimmy.  He also pointed out a few spots on his face and proudly said he was sporting them for the role.  When filming started, though, I overheard the producer telling make-up to ‘cover up the fucking zits!’”
   --Matthew Cooper (Family Style writer)

“The thing that really struck me was his boundless energy.  He has a real buzz about him and that was what shone straight out for me.”
   --Carl Prechezer (Blue Juice director)

“It was to be a feel good movie and the tempo was always intended to be jaunty.  Some actors are perfect for dramatic roles but so good in lighter, comic pieces.  Each require a different mentality and a different technique altogether.  Ewan has both.  He came in together with Steven Mackintosh and it just clicked.”
   --Carl Prechezer

“Ewan is a fine professional who works hard in the rehearsal room and is good fun on the set.  He loves his job and takes it seriously.”
   --Alan Plater (Doggin’ Around writer)

“Ewan was great.  He kept it all sort of fun and laid-back.  He just gets on with it and he’s a really good laugh at the same time.”
   --Andrew Macdonald

“What Ewan possesses is a huge amount of flexibility.  He has tremendous energy but also a great capacity for relaxation, which are the two elements that make up a really good actor.  One without the other either puts the audience to sleep, or is hugely irritating.”
   --Jonathan Hyde (Being Human co-star)

“It’s what McGregor doesn’t do that really hits home.”
   --Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting co-star)

“He’s a thoroughbred.  You get them once in a while.” (Ewan replies: “Maybe he means I’m fast and skinny.  Maybe he thinks I’m in-bred – thin ankles and skitty.”)
   --Danny Boyle

“He dresses weird.  The first time I met Ewan he was wearing a bright orange jacket and bright orange trousers and I thought he was a council worker.  I asked him ‘Where’re you digging up today then, son?’  He took it in great part, though.”
   --Peter Martin (Brassed Off co-star)

“He’s very restrained.  He hardly moves.  But you watch him all the time.  He has amazing eyes.  You can tell so much through the eyes.  Isn’t that what makes a movie star?”
   --Mark Herman (Brassed Off director)

“Ewan is a lovely young man and very talented.  It was clear that he was going to go far and he’s such a heart-throb to the girls.”
   --Peter Martin

“His accent was good too and he was very easy to work with – a lot of fun.”
   --Philip Jackson (Brassed Off co-star)

“Ewan likes his beer and is a superb pool player and we had a lot of laughs.”
   --Philip Jackson

“The last time I saw Ewan was at an awards ceremony in 1997.  He had to read some nominations, then clips from the nominated films were shown.  While they were being shown Ewan suddenly leapt off the stage, came to our table, lifted me up and gave me a big hug while announcing to the room ‘This man is the greatest!’  Even if I’m not, it was a smashing thing to do.”
   --Roy Hudd

“There is no recipe for star quality, but he’s very quick, very bright and with a fascinating face.  You can’t take your eyes off him on screen.  He is among those actors that can display a very wide range of emotions by hardly moving their face.  It brings back memories of the great actors from the Hollywood era.”
   --Philippe Rousselot

“It’s amazing that his head doesn’t turn 360 degrees, but he is astonishingly grounded.”
   --Richard E. Grant

“You can see there’s something about him the minute you lay eyes on him.  He’s dead cool.”
   --Nadia Sawalha (Sleeping With the Fishes co-star)

“In the film I fall in love with Ewan’s character and you can see how any girl could fall for him in real life, too.  He has sex appeal and is an amazing guy.”
   --Cameron Diaz

“He has got that ordinariness.  He doesn’t try to represent himself without spots.”
   --Danny Boyle

“When I first started thinking about my movie, he was the one actor I knew I wanted to use from the start.  There’s no one else with Ewan’s sort of intensity around.  Ewan has an incredible, raw power on-screen that I don’t think you find among American actors of his generation.”
   --Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine director)

“Ewan was very cool about the sex scenes.  I’m not sure an American actor of his age would have been so relaxed.  Americans tend to get worried about portraying gay characters – how it will affect their careers.  When they do sex scenes, they rend to leap up as soon as you say ‘cut’ and start punching walls to reassert their masculinity.  Ewan wasn’t like that.”
   --Todd Haynes

“Ewan had a sex scene with the actress Kelly Macdonald in Trainspotting.  Poor Kelly.  She’s a lovely girl, but at that time I just had a full-blown jealousy thing.  If I saw her, my heart started beating fast.  I would get out of breath.  I could hardly speak to her.  It’s very weird.  But that’s the only time.”
   --Eve Mavrakis

“There he is having a gay relationship with two different men.  I didn’t think I could ever relate to that.  But actually I found it rather sexy.”
   --Eve Mavrakis