Text: William Shaw
Photography: Sarah Dunn

On his first day in Morocco shooting the new Ridley Scott war movie Black Hawk Down, Ewan McGregor steps from the airport terminal into one of the battered Mercedes Grands taxis that scuttle about the ancient port city of Rabat.
   He strikes up a conversation. 'I was here before,' the 29-year-old actor says in his soft burr. 'But I can't remember the name of the hotel.'
   Trying to get his bearings, he describes the place to the driver.
   'Ah. The Tour Hassan?' the cabby suggests, citing Rabat's most famous landmark, an elaborately carved 12th-century minaret.
   'Yeah yeah yeah,' McGregor says enthusiastically. 'That was it.'
   'It's now called the Meridien,' the driver says proudly.
   McGregor laughs. 'So,' he says. 'There you go.'
   A lot has changed since 1993. Last time around, McGregor was shooting his first movie, Being Human, the Bill Forsyth/Robin Williams flop in whcih his character was referred to as 'English Acting Extra.'
   'Which pissed me off,' he says, 'on two counts.' one: he is not English. Two: he was not an extra - he had one line of dialogue, thank you very much.
   Now, eight years and 18 movies later, McGregor is back where he started. The city looks cleaner, he notes. There are fewer beggars on the streets. 'It's changed a lot,' he agrees.
   Last time he was out here, in Morocco, they gave him a whole month just do deliver one line.
   'Those were the days,' he grins, rubbing the sunburn on the back of his neck.
   They're getting more out of you this tiome then?
   'Just a bit,' he says.

These days Ewan McGregor commands a suite in the Rabat Hilton. On the bookshelves he's built a small shrine using toy soldiers and cartridge cases. Behind it sits a small framed document that reads: 'A Certification of Appreciation is awarded to Ewan McGregor for your dedicated commitment to the Ranger orientation for training for the movie Black Hawk Down...
   McGregor picks it from the shelf: 'I'm proud of that.'
   Black Hawk Down is the true story of the 1993 US Rangers attempt to capture the lieutenants of a Somalian warlord in Mogadishu. If the plan went as conceived, the Rangers should have been back at base within an hour. Instead, a rocked-propelled grenade downed one of the force's helicopters, and the troops were pinned down for a night in which 18 soldiers were killed and more than five hundred Somalis lost their lives.
   For authenticity's sake the cast (which also includes Josh Hartnett and McGregor's Trainspotting co-star Ewen Bremner) had to complete the aforementioned Ranger Orientation Program - a gruelling week of genuine boot camp in Georgia which included shaved heads and a rigorous schedule of runs, assault courses and weapons and combat training.
   'I was,' says McGregor with a smidgen of pride, 'fitter than I had imagined I would be.'
   He also discovered he was a pretty fair shot. 'Lying down, from 50 feet I was perfect. So I could really kill someone,' he grins. 'Which is always good to know.'
   McGregor has become obsessed with warfare. On the coffee table in his suite is a copy of Frederic Manning's The Middle Part Of Fortune, an eyewitness account of World War I trench battles. At night he has cryzy dreams, always about the military, full of weaponry and camouflage, and people giving orders. He takes aout a Zippo inscribed 'ANACONDA' and lights an ever-present Marlboro.
   'I'd always wanted to do a war film,' he enthuses. 'Just purely for the wee boy in me who used to play soldiers. And it's a lot like that, you know?'

Last night his agent phoned. He was singing.
   The agent had just seen a preview of Moulin Rouge, McGregor's latest film. The actor takes this as a good omen, as he hasn't seen the thing himself.
   Moulin Rouge, a love story set in a turn-of-the-century Paris nightclub, comes from Baz Luhrmann, director of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet.
   It's a movie that couldn't be less like the high testosterone shoot-out he's working on in Morocco. Moulin Rouge is an extravagant, wildly colourful musical in which McGregor plays a lovelorn poet. Maybe surprisingly for a man who's enjoying handling heavy armaments right now, it was McGregor's dream part.
   'I didn't have to convince Ewan to take the role,' says Luhrmann. 'He ran towards it. He gets to sing and dance, and he gets to kiss Nicole Kidman.'
   Moulin Rouge was originally scheduled for release in America last Christmas. Then it was bumped ahead to April. This is standard operating procedure in the world of film releases, but this was not a standard film cast. Halfway through shooting, McGregor's co-star found herself no longer in love. Rumours began to flow that the movie was delayed because Kidman didn't want to do interviews while her split with Tom Cruise was breaking news.
   McGregor shakes his head and makes a face. 'The delays were purely due to the huge tak of putting all the music together.'
   Were you aware of that situation between them?
   'No. Absolutely not. I had no idea. No idea. And I haven't spoken to her since the movie, so I don't know anything about it. It wasn't anything to do with me though...'
   That was my next question.
   'I didn't have an affair with Nicole Kidman. No.' He starts laughing. 'It was nothing to do with me...'
   Kidman, says McGregor, was 'a real poppet.'
   'And I think we got a really nice relationship, we really did,' adding hurriedly, 'on film, you know?'
   'Ewan,' Baz Luhrman expounds enthusiastically, 'is genetically built to be a romantic hero. And we've never seen him this way. I don't like to guarantee any one's experience of something I've made, but I can guarantee that he'll be a rvelation to the audience.'
   McGregor plays a young bourgeois poet who is dying to throw himself into the wild Bohemia that was fin-de-siècle Paris. In doing so, he falls in love with the most beautiful and unobtainable woman in the world, a rich man's courtesan at the Moulin Rouge nightclub. Just as it's hard to imagine the war-obsessed McGregor as bourgeois poet, Nicole Kidman isn't everyone's first choice as a bourgeois courtesan.
   'I used to say she was a skanky whore, which really used to piss her off,' he says. 'But, yes. She plays a courtesan. A high-class whore. A high-class skanky whore,' he adds, relishing the phrase. 'There was,' he says, 'a great book written that was just a description of all the whores in the Moulin Rouge. It's bizarre. Really detailed descriptions of each whore. "Good teeth" or "cracking tits." "Great arse, but terrible teeth."'
   Any of them fitting Nicole?
   'No. She was divine. There was no problem with her teeth or her tits.'

McGregor and Kidman sing throughout Moulin Rouge. Not 19th century classics, but rather modern pop songs. 'Like a Virgin,' Elton John's 'Your Song,' and T. Rex's 'Children of the Revolution.' The soundtrack also includes Number One single 'Lady Marmalade' by Lil' Kim, Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink, and produced by Missy Ellsiott, as well as contribution from Fatboy Slim, Timaland, Bekc and that showboat of fin-de-siècle Paris, Ozzy Osborne.
   McGregor loved recording his songs. 'I have a bit of a pash for the old musicals,' he says. In fact, he set his heart on acting at the age of 14, partly thanks to his nascent love. As a boy he played French horn and drummed in a local rock band. He plays guitar, Propped up on his bookshelf is a copy of Instant Five-String Banjo.
   'It's a nightmare,' he complains of the instrument he has taught himself while filming Black Hawk Down. 'Really hard work.' Despite the banjo, some say McGregor's voice is so good that there has been talk of a record deal with American label Interscope.
   McGregor is cagey about the idea.
   Baz Luhrmann, on the other hand, says the actor is up there with Bono.
   'My god!' McGregor says, genuinely shocked. 'That's quite a quote.'
   Next to the banjo guide are about 20 books he's brought to pass the time on the shoot, including an AS Byatt and several Chekovs. As a teenager, McGregor never used to like reading: it's a passion he developed in his twenties.
   Did you immerse yourself in Rimbaud and Verlaine to study for your part in Moulin Rouge?
   Blank look. 'Who?'
   Long, deadpan pause. Then he laughs.
   You're not a secret poetry writer yourself, then?
   'No.' Then he adds: 'I do write a wee bit now and then, I had an old typewriter to practice for the movie on in my trailer, so I've typed a bit. I wrote a lot of nonsense poems. They're in a book in my house in London. And there they will remain.'
   You're not going to produce a slim volume?
   'Thoughts From Moulin Rouge by Ewan McGregor? A book of shite. No.'
   Wait and see how well the film does before you rule it out.
   'Yeah, it would probably sell like hotcakes if it did [do well]. But it might be too embarrassing for me.'
   Stick to the Phantom Menace dolls.
   'Exactly. Yeah.'

McGregor spent a lot of last year in Australia. He bought a Harley Davidson and a tent and, when he had downtime, rode out of the city to camp, falling asleep by his fire and waking up at five in the morning, looking up at the stars.
   In Sydney, McGregor completed work on Star Wars Episode II. Being part of George Lucas' moneyspinner means you're a custodian of the master's secrets. Contractually, you're not allowed to discuss anything about the movie before its release. 'It's kind of flavoured everything I do,' McGregor says, uncomfortably. When I do interviews, I always worry now...'
   You're in quite a lot of Episode II, aren't you?
   You sound like my dad now. He always gets worried about how many lines I've got. "Are you in a lot, son? Are you on every page." I'm in a lot of it, yeah.'
   And we can expect some new toys that look vaguely like you?
   'I would assume so. But I know nothing about that side of it. I really don't. You go in there, do your bit and see the toys later. You know you get scanned now?
   'So maybe by the third one I won't need to be there. Hope I still get the cheque though.'
   It's nine in the evening at the suite at the Hilton. A chambermaid arrives with an espresso. Later we'll head to the bar, where McGregor will stick to soft drinks.
   The heady days when he'd out-drink journalists are over. He's making a conscious decision to calm down. There was one recent evening that involved dangerously large quantities of absinthe, but that was principally in the interest of research for Moulin Rouge.
   'It's wicked stuff, I assure you,' he says. 'I couldn't see properly the next day. My vision was like...' He waves his hands in front of his face. 'It's madness...
   Et voila,' says the rather more sober McGregor to the Moroccan maid. 'I'd like a Coke as well.'
   He's learning to play easier and work less, too. Before Black Hawk Down, McGregor put his full-on film career on hold for six months to spend time with his French wife of six years, Eve Mavrakis, a French production designer he met working on a TV shoot, and their daughter Clara. They spent the time doing the ordinary things, moving into their new house in north London, taking Clara to school. He recently set himself the task of improving his French. He says he became tired of their bilingual five-year-old running rings around him.
   Along with his newly tame family life, McGregor's is learning how to deal with spending time on his own for the first time.
   'Since I've been here I haven't been going mad. I haven't at all. And I've enjoyed it a lot. Reading, and watching movies on my DVD player, and dotting about on my own.
   'I didn't stop ever for far too long and it was really hard. It was hard on me. It's only in retrospect that I realise how hard it was. It's wasn't good for me. You know? It takes its toll. I didn't see very much of my daughter growing up, and you don't get a lot of that back.'
   You're going to be 30 two weeks from today.
   'I am. Yeah.'
   How's that going to strike when it hits?
   'I think it's good , yeah.' Pause. 'I think it's good. There's a huge relief as well i n turning 30. I think there's a craziness that I've got out of my system and I'm relieved, you know? I feel quite good about being 30.'
   He lights another Marlboro. Down in the hotel lobby he spots a 19-year-old member of the crew wearing new Black Hawk Down military dog tags. He pulls the boy's chain up and examines it, eagerly. 'Do I get one of those?' he begs.
   It turns out he does.
   Ewan McGregor looks almost ridiculously happy at the prospect.
   'Cool,' he says.