Cameron: "Swear to God. She'd seen it twice already in one day. And she was like: "You have to see it." And I was like: "I don't have to see it. I don't want to see it. I know him."
Ewan: (imitating Cameron) "I don't want to see that. I won't be able to look him in the face any more."
Cameron: She was like: "There's no wonder Ewan McGregor is confident. He doesn't have to be a movie star to be confident, let me tell you
-On his nudity and how Cameron couldn't watch his films"

"I remember being part of an awards ceremony at the Scottish People's Film Festival. They showed a clip of Trainspotting, but beeped out all the f-words. So, when I went up to collect my award, I said, 'For those of you who didn't get it, the missing words were 'f*ck', 'f*cking' and 'f*cked'. Afterwards, this bloke comes up to me and says, 'You're a bloody disgrace, laddie. You've moved away from Scotland. So don't bother to come back with all your effing and blinding.' So I told him to f*ck off. And he did. See, I don't like any of that nonsense. I just won't stand for it."

Ewan... recalled his first encounter with Greenaway [director of the Pillow Book].
"I read for him in several different accents and then he said, 'Look, you're going to be totally naked, and we need to be able to shoot anything.' I said, 'That's okay.' Then he said, 'Would you simulate sex with a woman?' 'Yeah, no problem.' 'Would you simulate sex with a man?' 'Yeah, that's okay.'" Ewan assumed he won the role in [the Pillow Book] because he was the "only guy in London who said 'yes' to all of those questions."
- from Rising to the Stars by James Hatfield

"If I smiled during a scene,I'd get a slap on the wrist. Obi-Wan wouldn't smile they would tell me."

"Nicole - Knickers, as I call her. I would swear, burp and fart in front of her. I'd try and embarrass her and she would pretend to be shocked. I always played up on that. It was a real elder sister-younger brother relationship."
-Ewan on his and Nicole's relationship on Moulin Rouge

"She's really giggly and you can make her laugh. A lot. I'd be very rude in front of her, swear a lot and belch and she'd say, "Ew-an!" Like a big sister with her younger brother. We had that sort of relationship where I would constantly be embarrassing her. But I used to play on it, and it amused me that this was Nicole Kidman and I could behave like this in front of her."
-Ewan- Elle Magazine August 2001

"So, we walked down there, and there was R2-D2 and I was screaming. It was like meeting a queen or something! And then the props guy came out with this big wooden box."

"An airport customs inspector once recognised me from Trainspotting and strip searched me looking for drugs"

"I'm just looking for that moment to drop my Jedi knickers and pull out my real lightsaber."

"It was a bit overwhelming when George [Lucas] said for the first time, 'Okay, now you come into the spaceship and start it up.' We were all suddenly on the floor laughing. 'You start it up?! How do you do that? Is there a key?'"
-on filming a scene in 'The Phantom Menace'

Jules Asner: "I know you've been nude in several films, was it ever hard?"
Ewan: "Sorry?"

"To be a part of a legend, to be a part of a modern myth, and to play the young Alec Guiness is an incredible honor. It's the most exciting thing I've ever known to have my own lightsaber. I can't have it in my hand and not give it a few twirls."

"I find it usually works to my advantage to make women wait."
-Ewan to a fan waiting to have her picture taken with him

"...every so often during the day I'd have a Star Wars moment -- I'd go 'Whoopee! Star Wars! Whoopee!' "
- Ewan - Woman Magazine, Aug 6th 2001.

"Actors that feel they have to suffer; that everything has to come from a point of pain. **** off."
-Ewan said of how he worried until playing Renton in Trainspotting that he didn't have enough pain in his past to be a real actor.

"I love making movies...I am happier than a pig in sh*te in front of the camera!"

"I don't know if anyone has ever sported a mullet and a beard with as much panache as myself."

"It is sexy, because it represents danger, and a life that most of us wouldn't lead. People either decided to be frightened of things we don't know about, or be excited by them. So on that level it makes sense that it's an attractive look. And I'm wet. It's a wet t-shirt!! So that's good. We all like a wet t-shirt, don't we?"
Ewan on the popularity of the 'Trainspotting' shirt with Ewan, hands hooked under armpits, wet and shivering.

"I have always been and am driven, although I don't know where to. I don't have any goal, or goals as such. [Being an actor] was always the way it was going to be... I've never let myself entertain the notion of what would happen if it didn't all work out."

"When I met with agents in L.A., they would tell me you had to do two movies for yourself and then two for the business. And I thought, 'Fuck off. No you don't. You do every film because you want to do good work. Because you're interested in making good movies and working with good people. To do a crapppy event movie for a lot of money, like Independence Day -- I would never taint my soul with that crap."

"I've always wanted to go to Hollywood, drive big cars and be in big movies. But I hope I won't just do any film to become a star. I just want to carry on working, acting. I don't want to direct or write. I think making films is brilliant. I get excited just going on a film set. Going on location is amazing, hanging about will all these film people doing their thing. If I bump into a star I get all star-struck."

"People have actually said to me, 'May the Force be with you'. I think that's quite batty."

"I've been waiting twenty years to have my own light saber. Nothing's cooler than being a Jedi Knight."

"Ewan was the clumsiest. Every take, something would fall off his costume or he'd drop his lightsaber."
-Stunt coordinator Nick Gillard

"Lying down from 50 feet, I was perfect. So I could really kill someone. Which is always good to know."
-Ewan on learning how to use a gun in Black Hawk Down

"It's dreadful. I guess I'm just an actor who can't say no. Every time I try to take a few months off, someone hands me a script that I think is too good to pass up. I really should take a holiday, I know, but for me, there's nothing better than arriving on a film set in the morning and just being someone new. I'm sure I'll be able to work all this out with a therapist in later years, but for now, making movies is just too much fun to stop and think about it."
-Ewan on being in 11 movies in 2 years

"Being naked was far more worrisome for everyone else on the set than it was for me," he reports. "I actually enjoyed it, the truth be told. There was something incredibly powerful about it. Usually you'd get arrested for that sort of thing, but I got paid."
-on Pillow Book

"More than anything, I'm at my happiest when I'm making a movie. I'd go mad with six months off."

"He always had his cock out. He's very fond of his penis, I think; I'm rather fond of mine, too. It made sense to me that he'd always be whipping it out. There were only four hundred extras there when I did it, so it was a different ball game. But to stand there with your trousers around your ankles, there's something about it . . . I don't know quite what, but it didn't feel at all out of place. It was a powerful feeling, in fact. Todd had written in the script that Curt turns around and moons the audience. I'd seen Iggy Pop do this thing where he stood stock-still, staring at the audience with his hands down the front of his trousers. And then he started to jig about and his trousers fell down as he was dancing around. I thought I'd do that but I ended up pulling my willy around and sticking my head between my knees. I had no idea that was going to happen and the camera crew certainly didn't. I'll never forget their faces after the first time."
-on Iggy Pop and Velvet Goldmine

"Success is tricky to deal with, both professionally and in your personal life. At the same time I still want more of it so I can sit there and see myself come up onscreen. I can never quite believe it's me up there and I can't quite describe how good it feels, even if it's not a very good film. It's in my dreams and there it is."

"There's nothing like being naked on the stage in Salisbury in the afternoon."

"I've got a film I'd like to be in her with."
-Ewan, referring to Halle Berry and making a very understandable Freudian slip

"It's F**** great being me!

"Do you want to do Star Wars they said? I said too f***** right!"

I needed to go and just find out exactly what it meant to be out and having fun in a kind of hedonistic and debauched environment. That's right, something I wasn't familiar with."
- Ewan, on researching for Moulin Rouge

"There is some really good crack when I come back here. This is where I learned to swear."
-Ewan on coming home to Scotland