Ewan McGregor talks to Out Magazine about his gay roles: “I like kissing boys on screen”

With his film I Love You Phillip Morris finally coming out next month, Ewan McGregor is on the cover of Out Magazine and gives a really juicy interview about playing gay (opposite Jim Carrey) in this and other films.

Here are some excerpts:

Despite the fact that it stars perhaps the most bankable star in Hollywood — the worldwide gross of Carrey’s movies is more than $4 billion dollars — and, opposite him, its most talented, I Love You Phillip Morris, has languished undistributed domestically for more than a year, even after a strong showing at its Sundance debut in 2009. “At Sundance everyone assumed it would be snapped up,” says McGregor, “but it wasn’t.” Perhaps one reason is that the central character is an unlovable (or uneasily loved) sociopathic scammer. But a more likely reason is that in cells, on bunks, on boats, before sunsets, after sunsets, on divans, over ottomans, without panning away or dissolving to white, the two men kiss, fondle, fuck, blow, suck, hold hands, dance, murmur, and eye. In short, they act like lovers do, and, because both Morris and Russell are openly gay men and their gayness seems not to trouble them in the slightest, this is a dicey commercial proposition. “There was talk,” says McGregor, “that Disney fended off the release until after A Christmas Carol came out. They didn’t want kids thinking [Carrey’s] Ebenezer Scrooge was a bender.”

“I’m very keen that it’s a gay movie,” McGregor insists. “There was quite a lot of talk at Sundance that ‘Well, it’s not a gay movie. It’s a film about guys who happen to be gay.’ And I was thinking, it’s nothing but a gay movie. It’s about a gay couple, about a man’s sexuality, and he comes out. It’s not the point of the film, but let’s not pretend it’s not a gay film.”

Though I Love You Phillip Morris may be some sort of Rubicon for Carrey, McGregor has kissed boys his entire career. “The first bisexual character I played was in [1996’s] The Pillow Book. There’s tons of sex in that film. We didn’t even bother putting clothes on between scenes. I had quite a full-on sex scene with a 75-year-old Japanese guy,” he recalls. “We’re kissing, and I remember going, He’s got a mustache and that’s kind of weird. Oh! That’s definitely a scrotum. That’s odd.”

Though his silver daddy moment was somewhat lost in the Trainspotting scrum, McGregor’s next movie, Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine, wherein he plays a barely disguised Iggy Pop to Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s epicene “David Bowie,” brought his propensity, willingness, and talent for kissing men to a wider audience and, in so doing, provided the raw footage for a fantasy reel of dreamy leading men locking lips. In fact, upon reflection, theirs might be about the most satisfying gay kiss ever committed to film. It’s got all you need: gold lamé, an Oscar Wilde quote (“The curve of your lips rewrite history”), the deceptive vulnerability of McGregor with his wide grin, the cruel-seeming beauty of Meyers. Oh, and eye shadow — dark, glam pools of it. “I remember when I kissed Johnny,” says McGregor. “It was just a rush at the end of the day. It was just an electrical moment, because you look around and some of the British electrician guys — who are all mainly closeted homosexuals, I think — were sitting around going ‘Fuck, no.’ But I like kissing boys on screen. As a straight guy, it’s quite an interesting proposition. Anything on a film set that takes you by surprise like that, that gets your blood up, is good.”