Ewan McGregor learned to punch people for his latest role Son of a Gun

Busy Ewan McGregor walks about his varied roles as a violent criminal in Son of a Gun and as the son of God in Last Days in the Desert.

You’d struggle to find anyone with a bad word to say about Ewan McGregor.

Indeed, the director of his latest movie describes him as “one of the best people on the planet”.

So it was quite out of character for him to end a day’s shooting by punching someone in the face.

Crieff-raised Ewan makes a departure from his norm to play bad boy Brendan Lynch in Australian movie Son of a Gun.

Heavily-tattooed Brendan is a habitual criminal serving a long prison sentence who takes an impressionable new arrival JR under his wing.

The young man, who has been incarcerated for a minor offence, is something of an escape expert and helps Brendan break out of jail. In return, Brendan invites him to join his gang on their latest heist.

The testosterone-filled world called for some macho off-set activities and resulted in the normally placid Ewan stepping inside a boxing ring with fellow cast member, former professional rugby league player Matt Nable.

“Matt formed this little fight club, so me, Brenton Thwaites, who plays JR, and some of the other cast would do a minute at a time with him and Matt would encourage us to really punch him,” recalls the 43-year-old, who worked out for three months before filming so he would look like he could take care of himself.

“Now I’m not used to punching someone, it’s not something that I’ve done a lot of. But he would say, ‘come on hit me, hit me’ and he’d swear at you and call you names until you did.

“Then every now and again he’d give you a wee tap back just to remind you who was in charge.”

Ewan isn’t completely unaccustomed to action movie roles, having worked on Hollywood blockbusters such as Black Hawk Down, The Island and most recently the second Star Wars trilogy in which he played the young Obi-Wan Kenobi.

But the thrills of a low-budget action movie were entirely different.

“I’m not really attracted to action sequences, because my experience is that they are quite a slow process to shoot, and often we’re not involved as actors,” he explains.

“But this was very different.

“The first time we got in a helicopter, I got in the back seat and I noticed my machine gun was tied to the chair. I thought that was odd, why would the machine gun be tied down?

“And then they said, ‘OK, ready to take off,’ and I pointed out the door was still open and the pilot said, ‘yeah, the door’s going to be open. Just put your seatbelt on. You’ll be fine!’

“And the next thing we were 1500 feet in the air with an open door. So, yes, some of the action sequences came as a bit of a surprise!”

Coming a long way since performing Elvis Presley impressions at family get-togethers in Crieff, Ewan now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, designer Eve Mavrakis, and their four daughters.

One of Brendan’s tattoos in Son of a Gun was his own. He has a heart and dagger tattoo of the names of his wife and children on his right arm.

The violent movie is Ewan’s second cinema release in the space of eight days. He also appears in the much gentler Mortdecai, alongside Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Upbeat, comical and utterly British in tone, the film is based on the charismatic anti-hero of Kyril Bonfiglioli’s popular literary trilogy Don’t Point That Thing at Me, Something Nasty In The Woodshed and After You With The Pistol.

Charlie Mortdecai (Depp) is a professional bon vivant and occasional art dealer perpetually at the end of his financial rope.

He is offered an opportunity to cover a few bills by former Oxford classmate Alistair Martland (McGregor), now a highly placed officer in MI5 on the trail of the missing Goya masterpiece.

“It reminded me of the Pink Panther movies of the ’70s,” says Ewan. “There’s a humour in it that I hadn’t seen for a long time. It was very cleverly written.”

His next release sees him combine righteous and immoral characters in the most extreme way possible, playing the dual roles of Jesus and the devil in Last Days in the Desert.

The film revolves around Christ’s 40-day sojourn in the wilderness, coming to terms with not just who is but also the sacrificial role his father has intended for him.

Ewan sums it up:“I tried to think of it in terms of a father/son relationship, and imagined God was my dad.”Son of a Gun will be in cinemas from Friday, January 30.