I’ve had good on-screen chemistry with people who I didn’t like, says Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor has claimed that on-screen chemistry can be faked and some of his best love scenes have been “with people who I didn’t like”.
The actor stars opposite his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, in a television adaptation of the 2016 Amor Towles novel A Gentleman in Moscow.
“There is something about the love we have for each other in the real world that can’t help but pour out on the screen,” he said.
However, asked in the Sunday Times if chemistry on screen was easier with your real-life wife, McGregor replied: “I don’t believe in chemistry. Actors are good or they’re not. You believe them or you don’t.
“I’ve had good chemistry on screen with people who I didn’t like.”
McGregor’s female co-stars over the years have included Kelly Macdonald in Trainspotting, Renée Zellweger in Down With Love and Miss Potter, Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge and Eva Green in Perfect Sense.
McGregor has numerous sex scenes with Winstead in A Gentleman in Moscow, which begins on Friday March 29, on Paramount+.
Despite their off-screen relationship, they were guided by an intimacy coordinator. “It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew. And it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera,” the 52-year-old told Radio Times.
“If you were doing a dance scene, you’d have a choreographer. It’s an important part of the work now.”
Winstead, 39, said she had most enjoyed filming scenes “where we flirt and I give him the cold shoulder”.
She also said it was beneficial working with her husband because they could both spend more time with their two-year-old son, Laurie.
“We got to be together in the same place, and so our little man got to have his routine,” she said.
The couple met on the set of Fargo in 2017 when McGregor was still married to Eve Mavrakis, 57, the mother of four of his children.
He previously likened the divorce to “a bomb going off in everyone’s lives – my children’s lives” and said that “the healing of that is ongoing”.
