“Star Wars” fans really, really love Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship.
Ewan McGregor is on the new cover of British GQ, and in the issue, the “Ob-Wan Kenobi” star opens up up returning to the “Star Wars” franchise and some of the intense fan art he receives.
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“There’s a lot of homoerotic Obi-Wan/ Hayden [Christensen] fan art that gets sent to me now and again… It’s always a bit of an eye-opener,” he says. “You open the envelope, you think you’re going to have to sign something, and you’re like, ‘F**king hell!’”
The actor also talks about how the prospect of coming back to “Star Wars” has hung over his career for over a decade now.
“Irvine Welsh wrote a sequel to ‘Trainspotting’, which was called Porno. And everyone asked me if I was going to do that, and would immediately follow up, ‘And what about Obi-Wan Kenobi, would you play him again?’” he recalls. “I did a bit of social media then — I don’t any more — but I would see it constantly, this question, are you going to do it again? Are you going to do it again?”
McGregor does have some experience on the other side of fandom, though, having been a massive fan of the band Oasis in the ’90s.
“If you spoke to anybody who came around my house in the ‘90s, it would always end up with There and Then, the video where they walk out and Noel’s got the Union Jack guitar,” he says. “That went on after dinner and would bore everyone to death. I was in my twenties, but I was like a 14-year- old fan. It was kind of embarrassing.”
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As for his own relationship with fame, McGregor says, “I don’t feel like that guy anymore. I don’t have the same relationship with my fame. That’s to do with age and experience, also just a realization of what works and what doesn’t. At that time, there was a hedonistic side to my life, which ended up not suiting the rest of my life.”
Looking at his own career, the 51-year-old says that his best performances have come from choosing roles he really resonates with.
“If I’ve ever done anything that didn’t come from a burning need to do that play, that part in that film, then it’s never been my best work,” McGregor says. “Not because I didn’t try harder, or try enough. There’s something magical about that: the need to do something. When you read something and you go, ‘this has to be me’.”
The July/ August issue of British GQ is available via digital download and on newsstands on June 28.
