What the Butler Saw (1992)
McGregor appeared nude in his first professional play, eliciting gasps from the Salisbury Playhouse audience. “It can’t be easy making your stage debut without clothes but Ewan McGregor does it like a future star,” remarked one local reviewer. “I loved prancing around the stage stark-naked,” said McGregor.
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Scarlet and Black (1993)
In the BBC adaptation of the Stendhal classic, the young star had nude bedroom scenes with Rachel Weisz and Alice Krige and got to spend a day running around the French countryside naked. Was he embarrassed? Far from it. “Anyone who says you feel nothing because it’s all technical is lying. In fact, the camera crew adds a certain frisson,” he said.
Trainspotting (1996)
Sex and nudity are all very well, but McGregor needed a new challenge and Trainspotting provided him with the platform of a steamy scene with underage schoolgirl Kelly Macdonald and the distinction of becoming the first actor in a mainstream, English-language movie to take a condom off on screen.
The Pillow Book (1996)
A real collector’s item this. McGregor’s character falls for a Japanese calligrapher and lets her use his body as a canvas, requiring him to be naked for much of the time. It prompted the infamous magazine headline “I do have a very large penis”.
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Star Wars
Sex and nudity have not figured prominently in George Lucas’s space-age epic, much to McGregor’s obvious disappointment. “I was looking for the right moment to drop my Jedi knickers and pull out my real lightsaber,” he told one interviewer. However, he is certainly not ruling out a gratuitous nude scene in the final episode, if the chance arises.