The Ultimate Ewan McGregor Movie Ranking: Top 10 Films

Ewan McGregor has had a heck of a career so far, showing he's one of our most versatile modern actors.

He takes risks in gritty indie dramas, then leans into iconic roles in blockbuster franchises, and veers into musicals, comedies, and romances, not to mention popping up on television shows like Fargo.

McGregor's newest roles include starring as Count Alexander Rostov in the TV series A Gentleman in Moscow and appearing as himself in the documentary series Long Way Home.

If you haven't visited the rest of his filmography in a while, these are some of our favorites.

Best Ewan McGregor Films

10. Down with Love

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Down with Love is a campy throwback to 1960s sex comedies that didn't perform well upon release (it was a flop in 2003), but many look back on it now with fondness. McGregor plays opposite Renée Zellweger in a deliberately artificial rom-com that's all double entendres and bright colors as Catcher Block, a Playboy-esque magazine writer trying to take down a feminist author.

The cast's commitment to the bit and some great set and costume design set the film apart and make it a worthy watch for McGregor fans.

9. Shallow Grave

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Danny Boyle's feature debut introduced McGregor in his first starring role as Alex, a journalist who shares an Edinburgh flat with two friends. When their mysterious new tenant dies of an overdose, leaving a suitcase full of cash, the three have to decide what to do next.

The film, often overlooked, announced both Boyle and McGregor as major talents. McGregor was a complete unknown who had to screen test for the role, while co-star Kerry Fox was their bankable name.

Much of the budget was spent on the set build.

"The colors of the apartment are really important to the film, and they're really bold choices," he told Criterion. "And I remember very clearly, them, because we started shooting, and the whole set wasn't complete."

The film's success rocketed McGregor into Trainspotting two years later.

8. Black Hawk Down

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Ridley Scott's war film drops viewers into the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. McGregor plays Ranger John Grimes in an ensemble that includes Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, and Tom Sizemore. The film's documentary-style approach and intensity required actors to disappear into the chaos.

McGregor trained with real Rangers and worked on matching their physicality and mindset, but he said he wouldn't make it as a real soldier.

"We'd have three- to four-mile runs every morning, and we did an assault course of a mile in the forest. It was hellish," he told the Irish Examiner.

7. Beginners

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Writer/director Mike Mills based this tender indie on his own experience of his father coming out as gay at age 75. McGregor plays Oliver, a graphic designer processing his father's late-life revelation and subsequent death.

McGregor wanted to capture Mills' sensibility, so he had the director record himself reading all the dialogue. When the father passes away in the story, emotions ran high for everyone on set.

"When Christopher died, Ewan really lost it in a very beautiful way," Mills told My Modern Met. "It was like very real. We shot it all chronologically, and that was one of the last things they shot, and I think you and Christopher had a really cool actor-to-actor thing."

Mills praised McGregor's reactive work, noting that watching him in closeup revealed remarkable layers of emotion. The director told him he wanted to make a silent film together because so much genuine feeling came across without words.

6. Velvet Goldmine

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McGregor is Curt Wild, an Iggy Pop-inspired rock god, in Todd Haynes' glam rock film.

McGregor later said the film was about freedom and being yourself, though the shoot involved "insane hours" and difficult working conditions, but he still came out loving music.

"Velvet Goldmine was an opportunity to get it out of my system. Of course, it didn't work. I thought it would expel the rock-'n'-roll demons, but it just put more of them in me," he told Interview.

McGregor and co-star Jonathan Rhys Meyers did their own singing for nearly all performance sequences, wanting to fully immerse themselves in the characters.

5. Doctor Sleep

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Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's sequel to The Shining had McGregor playing Danny Torrance as an adult. The character had to balance the legacy of Stanley Kubrick's first film with King's original vision.

Danny, who abuses alcohol to drown out his past, is at his lowest when the film starts. The sobriety aspect was personal for McGregor. "I live a sober life and have done for many years. And so this sort of
alcoholism is something I've never really explored in my work. And I felt like to do that, to do something that personal, but to do it with somebody who you've just met who you feel this personal with, was a good
combination," he told The Wrap.

When preparing, he studied Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance rather than child actor Danny Lloyd, reasoning that children grow up to be more like their parents.

4. Revenge of the Sith

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George Lucas' conclusion to the prequel trilogy gave McGregor the heaviest emotional lifting of his three Star Wars films. In this one, Obi-Wan Kenobi must witness his apprentice Anakin's fall to the dark side, culminating in their lightsaber duel on Mustafar.

He's played this role for over 25 years now with the Disney+ series, too. As his career progressed, McGregor realized how important George Lucas' universe was to young people.

"I loved, more than anything, getting to know Alec Guinness' work because I was playing him as a young man," he told Variety. "Even now with the series, that's my personal challenge — if a take feels a bit like him, I’m happy."

Could we see him as Kenobi again?

"I really do hope we get a chance to do another one," he said. "Between where we ended off in the series and when Alec Guinness comes on screen with Luke Skywalker, I think there's another few stories to tell in there."

3. Big Fish

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In Tim Burton's most emotionally grounded film, McGregor is the young Edward Bloom, a traveling salesman whose tall tales weave stories of monsters, giants, circuses, and love. The film moves between Edward's fantastical stories and his dying days, as his skeptical son seeks the truth in his father's life.

McGregor and Albert Finney play the same character at different ages without sharing screen time. He brought an element of the personal to the role.

"I responded more as a son as opposed to as a father. I think it's about a father and son relationship, and so therefore I thought a lot about my dad while we were doing it," McGregor told Female.com.au. "My father isn't dissimilar to Edward Bloom in that he's very gregarious and he loves telling stories. He doesn't tell huge stories about his life like Albert's Edward Bloom does, but he loves telling stories."

2. Moulin Rouge!

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We can't forget this icon of the aughts. Baz Luhrmann made a loud, manic, jukebox musical that was all hope and creativity in 2001. In it, McGregor plays Christian, a penniless writer who falls for Nicole Kidman's doomed Satine.

The scale of the production and Luhrmann's vision created something unlike anything McGregor had experienced before.

"I don't know if there can be such an experience again," McGregor told Showbiz CheatSheet. "The scale of it. I love Baz because he dreams big."

Six months before shooting, the cast did a two-week singing and dancing workshop. Later, Kidman remembered McGregor having an exquisite voice from the beginning (via Variety).

1. Trainspotting

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Way back in 1996, Boyle's adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel put McGregor in the real spotlight. It was his fourth film. He played a heroin addict trying to escape Edinburgh's drug scene.

McGregor's preparation was intense and unconventional. He told GQ:

I was in Luxembourg doing the Greenaway movie, Pillow Book, and I would go, on my days off, I would go to the train station just to watch. I don't know why, there's a lot of addicts around train stations. There's something they call it, in Scotland, they call it gouching. I don't know what they call it anywhere else, but nodding or whatever, when heroin addicts, they sort of like nod off, and their bodies... This guy, I was watching this guy outside the train station, he just folded like a book.

When discussing returning to the role for T2 Trainspotting two decades later, McGregor said "he was still there, ready to go" (via Time). The 20-year gap didn't seem to matter.

The role remains McGregor's most iconic for putting him on the map.