Ewan McGregor on the Cultural Impact of Trainspotting – The Awards Tour Podcast
For the film's 30th anniversary, McGregor talked about working with director Danny Boyle, the film's unique musical footprint, and its enduring legacy.
This week on The Awards Tour Podcast, our host Jacqueline Coley chats with Ewan McGregor to revisit his iconic turn in Trainspotting for the film’s 30th anniversary. The Star Wars star shares how the film came together under the direction of Danny Boyle, how it has left an impression on generations of cinema fans, and how the music indelibly cemented the film’s cultural footprint for its time. The Certified Fresh classic Trainspotting returned to theaters for a 30th anniversary 4K re-release on June 5.
Jacqueline Coley for Rotten Tomatoes: Did you know when you were filming Trainspotting that it was going to be big, because the book was already a cultural phenomenon? Did you have any idea that it would be this enduring?.
Ewan McGregor: You saw the cover of [Trainspotting] everywhere you went, and I don’t remember that happening since. There was Irvine’s amazing book, and then Danny put the cast together, and I was like, ‘Okay, these are the right people to be these characters.’ I also had an enormous love for Danny Boyle and a complete belief in him. He was my director. He was my first movie director, and he sort of set the bar impossibly high in terms of what you can expect, the satisfaction that you can expect as an actor working with a director telling a story. It was all downhill from there, because it was amazing. He knows how to do it and how to do it right. I had no doubt we were going to make a great movie. I didn’t know what it would do business-wise… but I knew that we were doing something special.
Trainspotting is played in select theaters on June 5.
