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Ewan McGregor

Scottish actor

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ165518 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ewan Gordon McGregor ( YOO-ən; born 31 March 1971) is a Scottish actor and filmmaker. His accolades include a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2013, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his service to drama and charity.

While studying drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, McGregor began his career with a leading role in the British series Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). He gained international recognition for starring as drug addict Mark Renton in Trainspotting (1996), and as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005). His career progressed with starring roles in the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) for which he was nominated for the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, action film Black Hawk Down (2001), fantasy film Big Fish (2003), and thriller Angels and Demons (2009). He was praised for his performances in the thriller The Ghost Writer (2010) and the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011).

McGregor made his directorial debut with the crime film American Pastoral (2016), in which he also starred. For his dual role as brothers Ray and Emmit Stussy in the third season of the anthology series Fargo (2017), he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ewan McGregor” is scottish actor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ewan, McGregor and Scottish, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1971, 2013, 1993, 1996—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1971-03-31. For this dossier, Ewan, McGregor and Scottish is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “scottish actor” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q165518. VIAF identifies the subject as 51854561. The Library of Congress control number is no97065600. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2013, 1993 and 1996.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ewan McGregor”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ewan McGregor primary sources, Ewan McGregor archive and Ewan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ewan McGregor”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ewan McGregor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.