As the star teams up with director Michael Grandage for his first West End part in 17 years, the pair discuss the thrill of putting on a new play, how it updates Ibsen for our times – and a Trainspotting-esque toilet encounter in Russia
n September last year, it was announced that Ewan McGregor, the 54-year-old Scottish actor, had been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The news item happened to pop up on the feed of Michael Grandage, the theatre director who worked with McGregor in the mid-2000s on two productions, Guys and Dolls and Othello, both under the Donmar Warehouse umbrella. “I thought, ‘Oh God, how brilliant is that!’” exclaims Grandage, who is 62 and since 2012 has been the artistic director of the Michael Grandage Company. “We hadn’t been in touch for a long time and I just thought that I’d send him a text, because it’s a big well done. It’s not something that a lot of people get, actually. I was looking up who hasn’t got one…”
Grandage and McGregor, who are sitting side by side in a rehearsal space in central London, steal a glance at each other and erupt, simultaneously, in loud howls.
McGregor was in Los Angeles, where he has mainly lived since 2008, when he received the text. But he had spent part of the summer in Scotland, where he has a home in Perthshire, and for the flight back he had grabbed a play from his bookshelf, a gift from his wife, the actor Mary Elizabeth Winstead. “I thought, ‘I haven’t read a play in years,’” he recalls. “And it was Ibsen’s The Master Builder. I’d never read Ibsen, and God, I loved it. So when I got my congratulations for the star from Michael, I replied saying, ‘Oh, that’s very kind. Thank you very much. I’ve just read The Master Builder for fun. I must be wanting to go back on stage…’”….