The lengthy feud between Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor
There have been some wonderful collaborations between actors and directors over the years. Just think of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, John Wayne and John Ford, Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy and look no further than Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor when it comes to British cinema of the 1990s.
McGregor had once said of Boyle, “He defined me as an actor. I felt like it was a badge on my sleeve. I am Danny Boyle’s actor.” The Scottish star had featured in Boyle’s debut, the indie crime thriller Shallow Grave, and famously followed up with a legendary performance in Trainspotting.
The two decided to work again on the lesser known A Life Less Ordinary, but by the time Boyle’s fourth film came around, 2000’s The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, McGregor looked to be deemed surplus to requirements. Boyle had felt that he needed a bigger star to sell his movie, and DiCaprio, not too long off the back of Titanic, fit the bill perfectly.
However, McGregor felt somewhat betrayed by Boyle and thought he’d been left behind while the director went on to bigger and better things. Now, of course, the actor did manage to carve out an enviable career of his own, but at the turn of the millennium, Boyle’s rejection marked the beginning of a feud between the two icons of British cinema.
Back in 2017, McGregor opened up on the falling out, telling Graham Norton: “It’s a big regret of mine that it went on for so very long. It’s a shame we didn’t work together all those years. It wasn’t about The Beach; it was about our friendship.”
“I felt I was in Danny’s first three movies… and then I wasn’t in his fourth, and it made me a bit rudderless,” McGregor went on. “I didn’t quite get it, and yeah, we didn’t speak for a long time, which was a waste.” Boyle was well within his right to move on to other actors, but McGregor still couldn’t help but feel hard done by.
Boyle had also been sitting on the sofa next to his one-time favourite actor and admitted that he did not break the news to McGregor that he would not be in The Beach well. “I handled it very, very badly, and I’ve apologised to Ewan,” the director said. “I felt a great shame about it.”
“It’s one of the things, weirdly, the film is about – trying to express emotions,” Boyle added. “And I felt a great shame about it, really. I was not proud of the way I handled it.” The director then turned to McGregor and noted, “He handled it with enormous grace and courage, actually.”
The words were spoken around the same time that the director and actor started speaking again and went on to make T2 Trainspotting, a sequel to the legendary British movie that was based on Irvine Welsh’s follow-up novel Porno. The rift was patched up, but the pair were always left to rue what might have been during those wasted years.
