Ewan McGregor Quotations

I'm just looking for that moment to drop my Jedi knickers and pull out my real light saber.

Producing good stuff can be quite tough, and it involves a lot of frustration, but I always like things to be jolly and happy, and I forget thats actually not the point at the end of the day.

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

I've always been really uninterested in politicians and the acts of the Houses of Parliament, or government as an idea. But I'm interested in politics in that I'm a member of the world, and I have strong feelings of right and wrong, but I can't get into the ins and outs of it.

I don't pay much attention to career or what other people think. I've always been quite arrogant.

Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There's no sense of something earned. I'm sorry, but when you're 12, you don't need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.

Mainly I was able to perform with music - I played the French horn, I would sing, and I was a drummer in the pipe band. So I think it was a way to show off.

I left halfway through my third year to start Lipstick On Your Collar, which was the first thing I ever did.

I've done nudity in lots of things before. It's something that's never particularly bothered me.

I like the idea of being a sculptor. Just me alone, making something - that solitary existence.

I've never been one who agonizes over my work.

Once you've agreed the script, you must be willing to go as far as it needs to go on set.

I like to dance, but it's not my weekend activity. I'm not a clubber.

My feeling about seeing the world is that it's going to change you necessarily, just the very fact of being out there and meeting people from different cultures and different ways of life.

I want to wear skinny jeans when I'm in my 70s. Why not? Who cares?

I'm in a position where I can do many things most people just daydream about.

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.

It's just fantastic to go out and meet people in the world and get to really remote places.

I find that the acting's getting easier - with experience, everything is more instinctual.

The thing about parenting rules is there aren't any. That's what makes it so difficult.

Success is tricky to deal with, both professionally and in your personal life.

I'm just into making quality stuff if I can, with interesting people and good scripts. But it's very important that it's about something and that it says something. Otherwise, I don't know what the point is, really.

As a child I was taken to the pantomime or the theatre and I would always, always fall in love with somebody on the stage. And want to have sex with them.

The other two things are... well, I had a huge appetite for old black and white movies on BBC 2. At the weekends they used to run matinees, and the more romantic the better.

When you take away the phone and e-mail and you don't have a million things to run around to, it allows your mind the space to think more expansively about the things that matter.

No, I haven't got any tattoos. Not yet.

Nicole - Knickers, as I call her. I would swear, burp and fart in front of her. I'd try and embarrass her and she would pretend to be shocked. I always played up on that. It was a real elder sister-younger brother relationship.' - on his and Nicole's relationship on Moulin Rouge

If we don't find some more birds fast, our goose is cooked.

I found my partner, my life partner, and I really am in love with my wife, and we have a lovely time, and we share a long history together and children together, and that's it.

I think it's quite tricky for actors to release albums. It's difficult, because I'm an actor, you know, I'm not a musician. I love singing, but I don't have a big repertoire of songs that I've written; I mean, I've got a few, but nothing that I could fill an album with, and I don't want to do it just for the sake of it.

I think the script is the key. Regardless of how great everybody else is working on a film, if you're working on a script that you don't think is great, you're not gonna be able to make a great film. Whereas if the script is great, then you can.

I was nine years old when I made up my mind that that was what I definitely wanted to do.

You can be playing a line some way and the director wants you to change that, or you can disagree. But I always think that the creative conversation between director and actor is what leads to good work.

When I was a kid I was much happier watching old movies than kids' TV, and I ended up watching all the old Ealing comedies.

The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything. And if you don't connect to that foundation, if you don't believe in that and feel that you wanna spend three, four months of your life exploring it, then all of the other elements are secondary.

So, no, I'm not trying to crack into Hollywood, although I'll make films there if they're good scripts.

Sometimes I feel like doing smaller budget stuff. When I did 'Young Adam', for instance, I'd come out of 'Black Hawk Down' and 'The Island', and I really wanted to be on a small film set. I wanted to be on something intimate and small again, and then 'Young Adam' cropped up in a pile of scripts I was sent.

Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.

This is purely an attempt to do some good theatre, commission new writing, adapt the classics and to do our own thing.

It was a natural progression for Jude and I -- that's where we started off.

For all of the hurtling towards climate change, there's also a lot more understanding of it than there was when we were kids. They don't call environmentalists tree huggers any more, so there's hope!

I left it for seven years before going back on stage. I know now not to leave it so long.

I'm sure it's not great fun for them, or for any parent, when their child says they want to be an actor, 'cos it's quite an uncertain business and it can be terribly hard for most actors.

I'm not a guy who takes films for strong political messages.

I'm lucky enough that financially I don't have to feel obliged to go for the bigger stuff. I like the stories and scripts to dictate if I want to do them.

There's something that happens where you go, if you're lucky, goodness me, from film to another film to another film. And you can sort of feel that if you step off that treadmill, it might all go horribly wrong and you might never be employed again, you know. And I suddenly thought that that's not necessarily the case. And I also thought we make drama as actors about people in the world and that if you are on that treadmill, you start making films about other films.

It is always a nice feeling when you are challenged by a scene and you walk out of trailer and you go on set going I don't know. And then half an hour later you're walking back.

I love music and I always seem to have a tune in my head.

A million pounds sounds like a lot of money now that I'm saying it. But in terms of moviemaking, it's not a lot of money. And yet you can see what can be done with that, with the talent of a great cinematographer and great director and actors.

I have worked with a lot of great directors but my favorites are all entirely different from one another. They don't go about it the same way.

I don't like being told that's where you, you know, if you walk on set and somebody was "okay, you're here and you're going to walk over there on this line." And my reaction is always how do you know? How do you know that's what I'm going to do? How do any of us know?

There's nothing worse than shooting a scene you haven't rehearsed.

For the actors, there's something very important about that first showing of the scene to the crew, becomes like a little performance.

There's very few directors that know what that rehearsal's for. And often it's just about calming down the director. If he could see it or she sees it, she goes oh, it's going to be okay.

You would never dream of going on to play a scene in front of an audience at least without having rehearsed it. But you do somehow in front of a camera.

I love exploring in a rehearsal room with other actors, scenes and you know, stuff you are scared of.

When you've got a date on your calendar saying that you will be putting this in front of people in four weeks, that will get your nerves good, yeah.

I can't know what I'm going to do before I'm in front of the lens. And I think that sort of makes it exciting.

I believe that unless it's a scene where I'm alone, then of course I could do what I want but I think good acting is about what happens between people, not on your face and my face.

I don't want to make decisions about what I'm going to do before I'm doing it because I base my acting off my partner and off the other people in the scene.

I wanted to make sure that I was making films about the world. So I thought well, I should go and see it. I'm spending a lot of time in - we call them caravans in Britain.

I was spending a lot of time in trailers, you know, on film sets surrounded by film people.

I love film people and actors and I am in the right world because I am one of those people.

I wanted to go and explore the world, I guess. And I suddenly thought well, I'll just do it.

In far Eastern Russia, there's just some towns that time has forgotten. I guess they used to maybe be industrial or something that are now there's just lots of rusty hulks of buildings and a lot of people wandering around, a lot of alcoholism and violence because people have got nothing to do and no work. Yet people were very generous.

I wanted to be an actor since I was nine years old.

I grew up in a very small town in Scotland, a little place called Crieff which is beautiful and it's at the foothills to the highlands. It's a very beautiful part of the world. It's a small, I suppose quite conservative place.

I was getting in trouble at school. I wasn't happy. The school was very much a school that created people for commerce and it wasn't an arty school.

I was forced to make the decision between art and music which are the only two things I liked as opposed to being able to do them both because that's what I was interested in.

I don't really like to know what I'm going to do before I do it.

Everyone has to understand what we're saying to one another and there's no point in me thinking the line means this and the person I'm speaking to thinks it means something else. So there's a certain amount of analyzing of text that's of course necessary.

If I'm playing music in front of people, I'll lose days to nerves like really wasted days of just like being terrified. And then when I get out there, generally speaking, I enjoy it very much. But it seems to be I have to accept the fact that that's just part of the deal for me. And I can't just run on and do it.

I think if you're going on thinking oh, I can do this with my eyes shut, then it's probably not the right thing to be doing, you know.

I've never worked with an acting coach, no.

There's something very self-conscious about a writer who's addressing his reader. Don't do that.

Actors don't like to read what they're supposed to do.

Don't worry about telling your actor what to do.

I was quite interested to do television series and I started exploring an idea of a longer commitment, a new idea, a new TV show that would've meant a longer commitment but I opened my mind up.

I think you know, to not open your mind to television is silly because there's so much good work happening on television.

I hate the word celebrity. I'm not a celebrity, I'm an actor.

There are people who are younger than I who are more uptight than I am. It's not necessarily an age thing. I mean nobody is offering me 20-year old leads any more.

This middle-budget drama movies are just gone.

I'm not really attracted to action sequences, because my experience is that it's quite a slow process to shoot them, and often we're not involved as actors.

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].

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.

UNICEF is successfully giving children and young people all over the world opportunities and hope. Just like the ones we met on the Long Way Down - protecting them from exploitation and giving them chances in life.

I am so honoured to have been given this opportunity to become an Ambassador. It's a new and different venture for me and one that I know will widen my wider perspective on life. I'm in a position to use the recognition from my work to do something really positive for children

UNICEF is doing amazing things here. They're helping these groups of kids to be mine aware, and using drama and workshops to teach children in all of the schools in the area to be aware of mines and what to do if they find one, and if somebody's hurt, not to rush in - all of the essential things that kids need to know.

I was determined to make working with UNICEF not just something that I did on the trip but something I'd do for the rest of my life

If I want to do the kind of work that I like to act in, I need to open my mind to it.

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

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.

When you take the R sound out of French accent, and you just replace it with an R, it sounds Mexican.

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

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

My wife's French. I mean I speak a bit of French but I've lived amongst French, you know, most of my adult life.

It's important, that spirit of youth, and when you're 16 that can get you kickstarted.

The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything.

It's impossible to put your finger on what that is exactly other than protecting the environment that the actors get to find the scenes and build the scenes and invest in them. I think that's key and that's what I've learned from all the great directors I've worked with.