Ewan McGregor on how Christopher Robin role is perfect for him now
Ewan McGregor says he gets Christopher Robin
Millions of children around the world have grown up reading A. A. Milne's Winnie-The-Pooh stories about the seven-year-old boy named Christopher Robin who had magical adventures with his toys in the Hundred Acre Wood.
They end with him going away to boarding school, the author's way of saying it was time to grow up and be serious.
Opening here tomorrow, the new live-action movie Christopher Robin imagines the titular character all grown up with a wife and daughter (played by Hayley Atwell and Bronte Carmichael) in London in the 1940s, dealing with the stresses of his job as an efficiency manager at Winslow Luggage.
Somewhere down the path to adulthood, he had lost his way and forgotten the make-believe and imagination that defined his childhood, with little time for his family.
But Pooh and his friends return to save the day, his career and his relationship with his wife and daughter.
At the Montage Beverly Hills hotel, Ewan McGregor explained why he took the role of Christopher Robin in the comedy-drama.
Said the 47-year-old Scottish actor: "I just felt like I really knew who Christopher was from the first reading. I think sometimes there are parts that come along at the right time, and I do not really know why, but I felt like this was the perfect role for me to play at this point in my life.
"I felt like I knew him really well and I did not have to struggle. I did not have many questions because I just felt like I knew who I was meant to play."
McGregor has not worked since wrapping this movie last year, and that could have been because of some personal turmoil in his life, though he would not address it in our interview.
PERSONAL DRAMA
He split from his wife of 22 years - with whom he has four daughters aged seven to 22 - last October, though apparently they had been estranged since May last year as he was dating his Fargo co-star, 33-year-old Mary Elizabeth Winstead. He filed for divorce in January.
In his acceptance speech after winning a Golden Globe for best actor for the TV series earlier this year, he thanked them both.
It is no wonder that McGregor was in need of a little fantasy amid his reality - even if it was to be found on a movie set.
He described the process that enabled him to act with real actors instead of tennis balls on sticks for the scenes with the toys.
Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum Of Solace, World War Z) hired a group of young actors just out of drama school to hold the toys and say their lines in the scenes in the wood.
McGregor recalled: "They were not going to be in the film.
"Their voices were not even going to be in the film, they were there just to play the scenes with us.
"The toys looked exactly like the creatures do in the movie but they were not animated in any way. If I was speaking to Pooh, the actor would turn his head towards me and would play the scene with me. So I would be looking at the bear or Eeyore or Tigger and hearing their voice."
Different toys were used for visual effects, which were then animated, with the final voice cast dubbed in.
As any doting dad would do, McGregor has read the Winnie-The-Pooh books to his kids.
He said: "I recently read them to my youngest one. I was trying to distract her from something else she wanted to do, so I said, 'Let's just read a bit about Winnie-The-Pooh', and by the end, we had read 60 pages together.
"It was so good and I am so familiar with them so I can only assume I was read them as a kid. I know the pictures, the little drawings of him under the balloon."
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