Black Book: McGregor Goes all "Romantic"

In Black Book, Nick Haramis looks back at the career of Beginners’ star Ewan McGregor in his article “Ewan McGregor Delivers His Most Vulnerable Performance Yet in Beginners.” It’s a very full and expansive piece on McGregor’s career. (Also see our People in Film: Ewan McGregor). But one part really stood out. Although McGregor has played a wide range of characters, from heroin addict to space age warrior, he admits a real penchant for romance.

When I was a really small kid, like 5 or 6, I was obsessed with romantic movies…For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a real appetite for those types of movies from the ’30s and ’40s. I like them more than the romantic films of today because they didn’t make any excuses for being romantic. We tend to shroud ours in comedy because it’s embarrassing to be romantic, but that wasn’t the case back then. I like savage and painful love in movies, and that’s one of the great things about Beginners: Its characters don’t really know what’s going on, but they feel really good when it’s going right and they’re destroyed when it’s not, and that’s a lot like real life.