Cinema Experts

McGregor attended Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1988 to study drama. Six months before graduating, he won a leading role in Dennis Potter’s six-part BBC series Lipstick on Your Collar, and has been working steadily ever since. He made his feature film debut in 1993 in Bill Forsyth’s Being Human. The following year, he earned widespread praise and won an Empire Award for his performance in the thriller Shallow Grave, which marked his first collaboration with director Danny Boyle. His major international breakthrough soon followed with the role of heroin addict Mark Renton in Boyle's film version of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1996).
McGregor has been featured as the male romantic lead in Hollywood films such as Moulin Rouge! and Down With Love, and in the British film Little Voice. He received excellent reviews for his performance as an amoral drifter mixed up in murder in the British film Young Adam (2003), which co-starred the acclaimed British actress Tilda Swinton.
He took on the role of a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, a role originally made famous by Sir Alec Guinness in the original Star Wars films. In appearing in Star Wars films, he was continuing a family tradition of sorts: his uncle, Denis Lawson, had played Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars trilogy. McGregor, though, has stated that the Star Wars films were the worst work that he has done and that he regrets being in the films. McGregor was also offered the role as James Bond in Casino Royale but turned it down.
In 2005, McGregor lent his voice to two successful animated features. McGregor provided the voice of the lovable robot "Rodney Copperbottom" in Robots, which also featured the voices of Halle Berry and Robin Williams. He then voiced the lead character in Gary Chapman's Valiant alongside Jim Broadbent and John Cleese. Additionally in 2005, McGregor played two roles (one a clone of the other) opposite Scarlett Johansson in Michael Bay's The Island and then appeared in Marc Forster's Stay, a psychological thriller co-starring Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. Both films were considered box office flops in America and received negative reviews from critics.
In theatre, he starred alongside Jane Krakowski, Douglas Hodge and Jenna Russell in the original Donmar Warehouse production of Guys and Dolls in London at the Piccadilly Theatre. He played the leading role of Sky Masterson, made famous by Marlon Brando in the movie, to much critical acclaim, and he received the LastMinute.com award for Best Actor in 2005. He was also nominated for an Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
McGregor is next set to appear opposite Colin Farrell in Cassandra's Dream and will co-star with Daniel Craig in Dan Harris' upcoming film adaptation of Glen Duncan's novel I, Lucifer.

“A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.”
How many of us have met someone who always tells us "tall tales?" Are they true stories or are they mostly exaggerated? As you watch this film your mind may well be asking that question: Is Albert Finney's life as Ed Bloom, a mere figment of his imagination or did he actually live all those "adventures"?
"Big Fish" combines Burton's unusual humor with a heart-wrenching story of a father-son deathbed reconciliation. Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor share the role of Ed Bloom, one of the big fish from the movie's title while an SUV-sized catfish plays the other. Bloom is a metaphorical and literal big fish in the small pond of Ashton, Alabama in this tale told mostly through flashback. Jessica Lange plays his wife and Billy Crudup plays the son, Will, estranged from his father for the past three years. Father and son are reunited as Finney lies dying of cancer.
Ed Bloom has spent his life spinning his personal history into mythological proportions: an early encounter with a very tall man becomes a battle with a house-sized giant; a rural village is depicted as heaven on earth; military service during the Korean War morphs into a behind-the-lines mission that would make Duke Nukem proud. Originally a true believer, Will now knows everything his father has told him was not just an exageration or even a tall tale but an outright lie. In his effort to understand the truth behind his father's stories he learns to love the man as well as the mythology.
Burton deals with mythic themes in "Big Fish." Besides the surface story of the generational tension between father and son he explores the metaphor of the big-fish-in-a-small-pond by examining the impact Ed Bloom has had on the lives he's touched in his workaday contacts with colleagues, customers (he's a traveling salesman), and people in the small towns across the South. Not exactly "It's A Wonderful Life," he still manages to show how all of us - even the little fish - have profound effects on the people around us. And of course love -unrequited and reciprocated - control almost all of Ed's many adventures.
It's a heart warming, funny movie where fantasy and reality go hand in hand and the possible is as likely as the impossible. It's filmed so perfectly that if it doesn't touch you, you must be a corpse… 10/10