Ewan McGregor reflects on ‘weird’ experience filming ‘doomed’ ‘Star Wars’

Ewan McGregor wasn’t originally the biggest fan of his Star Wars role.

Though his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the 1999 prequel trilogy would become one of his most iconic roles, the now-52-year-old actor didn’t think much of it at the time.

Instead, McGregor recently told Variety that while filming Episode I – The Phantom Menace, he had his heart set on another project he had lined up at the time.

“[Star Wars] wasn’t a done deal for me. I didn’t think it was at all who I was,” he reflected.

“I believed, at that point, I was a Danny Boyle actor,” he said, referring to director Danny Boyle’s with whom he briefly worked for the 2000 movie The Beach. “The Beach was more important and I meant it – it wasn’t flippant,” he admitted.

Eventually, McGregor was replaced by Leonardo DiCaprio due to a dispute with Boyle.

McGregor noted that though he is happy about his Star Wars character’s legacy and what it meant for a lot of fans, things weren’t looking up at the time of its release.

“When these films came out, they were so disliked. That was hard. The first one was panned and we still had to make another two! It was weird to be in a film that was hammered,” he recalled.

Still, McGregor saw through the trilogy and made his mark in the Star Wars cinematic universe for decades to come, lending his voice to 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker.

In 2022, he reprised his role on screen as the Jedi Master in the Disney + series Revenge of the Sith.