I used to love Ewan McGregor. I used to be hot for him, and I used to think he was genuinely cool. How quickly things can change – ever since he left his wife of 22 years for his much-younger costar, all I see now is that Ewan is such a middle-aged cliche. It sucks. His daughters are torn up about it too, so it’s not like this was some high-minded conscious uncoupling. He ripped his family apart to get with a younger woman.
But it’s standard at this point that if you’re a white guy who once beloved but now finds yourself in a bad-press storm, all you need to do is make a family film. Ewan stars in Disney’s Christopher Robin, where he plays the adult Christopher Robin who grew up with Pooh Bear and Piglet and then needs to hang with them again in adulthood. These photos are from the LA premiere last night. Here’s the trailer:
And here’s Ewan interviewing the cast:
I mean… kids will enjoy this. It was a smart move for Ewan as well, to make a quality family film for Disney. Anything to make people forget that his own family is in shambles, I suppose.
Here’s Hayley Atwell (she plays Christopher’s wife). Bad hair, okay dress.
I have no idea why these photos of Kyle Richards and John Stamos (with his wife) are so funny to me. They just seem so try-hard. It’s the premiere of a kids’ movie, you don’t have to be “cool”!
Photos courtesy of WENN.
He was married since he was 24, he basically grew up in that marriage. He just happened to grow out of it and fall for someone else. I don’t think he needs our opinion on this. Would you ask someone’s opinion if you no longer wanted to stay in your marriage? exactly.
Ewan is still very cool and hot.
In general I agree with you — the only two people who can really understand a marriage are the ones in it and if someone grows apart from their spouse to the point where they need to leave their marriage that’s profoundly sad but certainly not monstrous. But in this case Ewan brought his coworker mistress home for dinners with his wife and children as a”family friend.” That’s just straight up douchey, gaslighting.
@jessamine, what you describe is obviously painful for the family. IF that’s true – lots of things are said in these situations. But it’s their private lives and to me does not interfere with his acting for me. I am not going to use gossip as a compass to judge the quality of someone’s work or films in general.
@Lilaa I totally agree.
And I love Pooh bear too so will definitely be seeing this movie!
He cheated, he lied, he deceived and he flaunted his mistress in his wife and daughters’ faces. The man has neither honour nor integrity. His behaviour cannot be excused.
@InquisitiveNewt we can’t possibly know the exact detailes, it’s only a speculations. And yes, people happen to fall for someone they’ve known for some time, or would you expect him to leave his wife for a stranger he met yesterday? Again, we all imagine ourselves in a place of his wife (“I gave him the best years of my life!”), but how about we drop the victim attitude and imagine ourselves in Ewan’s place – falling for someone we have to see every day (cause of work) while being married. Women are sexual and romantic beings too, this could have happened to anyone. Would it be better if he stayed with his family but imagined someone else in his arms? is this what people want?
Maybe it would have been far better if he divorced from his wife, started a new life without her and then started seeing someone else? I don’t think the problem is that he left his wife, but the way how he did it is despicable. Cheating, flaunting his new love, hurting his children.
I find it despicable as well. If he wanted out of the marriage, he should have handled it appropriately. Gone to his wife, tell her he wanted a divorce and kept his dick in his pants until the divorce was at least filed and he moved out. He pulled a dick move and should have been a man about it, not a coward.
Stamos still looks amazing, and his wife is beautiful. I never found mcgregor hot so i don’t really have feelings about this one way or the other.
I don’t take celebs cheating on their spouses personally. It’s not a good thing to do but considering the criminal stuff that goes down in Hollywood of the sexual harassment type variety a cheating story means nothing to me. Unless I know the couple in question it just doesn’t affect me all that much.
Right? These days I am just relieved when it’s consensual. It’s really not of any interest to me.
Yeah, I don’t care. Marriages break up, and it’s not exactly rare for cheating to be the cause. It’s not good behaviour obviously, but I’m not going to write everyone who’s ever had an affair off.
In McGregor’s case he’d pretty openly cheated throughout the entirety of his marriage, to the point that most people just assumed he and his ex must of had an arrangement of some kind. So it’s not like this is a shocking development.
Completely agree. People cheat all the time, couples break-up, there are open relationships, three ways and whatnot. None of my concern when it comes to see an actor do his work and I think most people think like that. Unless an actor is a criminal, i.e. abused someone I don’t mix personal life and acting abilities.
My only issue is that men seem to get a pass from everyone with this kind of behaviour and women less. However, for me, it’s the same. I don’t care if Claire Danes stole someone’s husband or not. If I like her acting I’ll go see her films.
One cannot steal a husband. Husbands are not things and they are not their wives’ property.
@Lena, I hope you are not replying to me, I was simply replicating what people say about Claire Danes. I will not elaborate on stealing people’s spouses as that was not my point. Quite the opposite actually.
Ditto to all the above. Art and life: if the ‘art’ is good, then the ‘life’ is of no consequence.
I’m not a huge Ewan fan, but I do love me some Pooh. My mom used to sing House at Pooh Corner to us as a lullaby. I’ve definitely got to see it.
I am a big Ewan fan (I could listen to him talk forever) and a big Pooh fan. Disney’s earlier Pooh stories were good as they stuck to the script, but the later ones make me feel all stabby. So, I’ll wait!
The plot seems to remind me of Drop Dead Fred for some reason
He’s being his usual fake self, playing the family man when hes torn his own family apart – he’s full of it.
Agreed.
I’m actually a little shocked by the blasé, so be it comments above. Unfortunately, we live in a personality driven world, without nuance (dialectical materialism realised, if we are going to be fancy/philosophical about it, with the obliteration of moral standards that postmodernism urges). “Stars” are seen as role models, possessing admirable qualities that should be emulated. If the young grow up in the knowledge that there apparently is no truth, that deception is valid, that pain caused to others is irrelevant, that their heroes are indifferent to suffering – what kind of a world are we creating? When, post WW2, we had come so far?
It’s a choice isn’t it, to regulate one’s own life through unchecked gossip rather than the stories these people help tell as actors. Postmodernism is dead along with the fairytale of no truth is the truth. Posthumanism, a construction of the notion of desire as a production, something positive rather than the pshychanalytical notion of lack, or void to fill is rather more exciting. We, as humans, create realities and the realities we build upon are the ones that are valued. If you want to focus on a poor devil’s personal life so be it. But why not look at the work he does with others – a film, a work of art – rather than his personal misgivings? And surround oneselves with good, generous exciting people – you know, the real tangible ones we interact with?
@Slowsnow – Firstly, postmodernism is in no way dead, but a central pillar of the social sciences and contemporary philosophical studies. It and its warped twin, relativism (cultural or otherwise) have given rise to the thesis that realities are inherently personal, that Metaphysics is an outmoded and even damaging area of philosophy (certainly no being in the manner of itself). This contemporary, so-called posthistorical individualism is further compounded by (M)modern ennui (as in Sartre), dialectical materialism and deconstruction.
In everyday terms, such as the recapitulation of the concept of imagination which Plato, Animaxander, Thales and the Arabic greats were writing of thousands of years before the present (but then in order to give ourselves purpose in being, though materialism renders us purposeless, we nonetheless must reframe narratives to suit today’s world), it is to the good. In societal terms, it is to the bad and fundamentally untrue. We uphold certain universals and decry those who break such taboos – such as child molestation, for example. Such behaviour is predicated upon centuries of observation of the harm done therein and is therefore severely punished by the law – another universal and constant; while we decry it as an ass, we do not deny its absolute power over us individually and collectively. Adultery still exists upon divorce papers for the specific reason that it is the breaking of a contract entered into by two signatories, and by them alone. The irruption of a third party into said contract breaches its terms and causes significant legal, and thus personal stress. From a psychosocial perspective, the effects of said breach has an emotional effect upon the one who is innocent of breaking the contract and any issue which resulted from the making of said contract. A vast wealth of academic material exists pertaining to the damage caused upon developing and young adult (up to the time at which the brain ceases development, eg the age of 25) minds and behaviour.
I am afraid that I do not buy the “let him stand by his body of work” narrative. To do so would be to give a blank cheque to Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Leni Riefenstahl et al. And in today’s highly public and emotive world (again the consequence of postmodernism: emotion trumps reason) the public presence is as ‘important’ as the character played.
I love Pooh, but I will skip this movie. Pooh is a character for children — so why center the movie around an adult’s angst? There’s shouldn’t even be adults in the movie (like in the Peanuts cartoons, where you never see an adult). Plus, I think they should have gone with the classic character looks rather than the modern ones (modern Tigger is especially off-putting).
And finally, Disney’s review embargo doesn’t lift until Thursday night, literally hours before the movie opens. That’s a very, very, bad sign.
The movie is about the creator of Pooh. He was an adult.