Ewan McGregor plays a knight in ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Ewan McGregor gets his derring-do on for director Bryan Singer in “Jack the Giant Slayer,” playing a knight who’s forthright and heroic — to a fault — as he and Jack (Nicholas Hoult) try to rescue a princess from the aforementioned giants. But McGregor’s inspiration for the character may surprise you.
You look fantastic in this movie. It seems like you haven’t aged in the last 10 years. What gives?
(laughs) I don’t have a secret to that, I’m afraid.
When you’re presented with a forthright knight type of character, how do you approach that?
I don’t know, it’s a pretty understandable character. It’s a sort of classic role. It’s not something new, really. I just played what was on the page, really. It’s very well and clearly written in the script. And I liked the humor. I thought the humor that was in the writing was very good. I like the fact that he’s sort of very gung-ho but very often doesn’t quite get things right, and then Jack has to come along behind him and tidy things up. Sort of like a “Hong Kong Phooey” type style. That cartoon was one of my main sources of research, “Hong Kong Phooey.”
The film very carefully walks that line of appealing to both kids and adults.
I think that’s right. It lies in exactly the right place for a film that’s being made for a family to watch. Very often these days you take your kids to films and there’s inappropriate language or sexual jokes that are very clearly aimed for the parents. You don’t want your kids seeing that, or at least I don’t. But this is absolutely something that you could take your family to see and you wouldn’t find yourself in any awkward moments with your kids, you know? It’s a classic sort of family movie.
It’s nice to see you working with your “Trainspotting” co-star Ewan Bremner again.
We did “Black Hawk Down” together and then we did another film called “Perfect Sense” together, so this is the fourth film that we’ve made together. I’m always happy to work with him because he’s a great actor, Ewan. I like working with him very much. But yeah, four films we’ve made together now, so it’ll be interesting to see what the next one is. We don’t have anything planned that I know of.
You mentioned on Twitter recently that you were dismayed to not see more promotion for “the Impossible,” which could’ve used a better marketing push.
I just didn’t see any posters, that was all. I was commenting on the fact that I was driving around and I was seeing lots of “Jack the Giant Killer” posters, but there weren’t any posters for “the Impossible.” Not in the States, not that I saw anyway. That might’ve helped.
