  Ewan McGregor (left) plays the straitlaced older brother to Colin Farrell’s n’er-do-well dreamer in a film about a dark deed that tears the siblings apart. (Supplied photo)
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When Ewan met Colin, apparently it wasn’t the boon to the local pub economy some might have expected.
That’s Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, two actors with past hellraising reputations who met up playing brothers in East End London in Cassandra’s Dream, the ultimately bleak Woody Allen film about a dark deed that tears the siblings apart.
“I certainly got on with Colin very much, from the moment I met him,” McGregor said yesterday, promoting the film’s debut today at the Toronto International Film Festival. “But there really wasn’t much time (to socialize).
“We worked on our accents with the same dialogue coach, a kind of a soft East End accent. And then, because with Woody you don’t have any closeups or coverage to shoot, you’ve got these long, single-frame scenes with a lot of dialogue.
“So Colin and I would get out of the car first thing in the morning and start the scene, running lines, and we’d run them right through makeup. So when we got on set, we’d be ready to nail it. We worked very hard together.”
It must be noted that Farrell was also a few months out of rehab, following his last film, Miami Vice.
“Colin was just one of the actors I’d always wanted to work with, and then when this came up, I was already so thrilled to be working with Woody Allen,” McGregor said. “And then to find out he was playing the other brother, I was delighted.”
Meeting Allen was another story. McGregor, who does a quite funny impression of the director, said he’d heard “quite a lot of myth about him. Some of the things I’d heard is he doesn’t speak to you, he doesn’t call you by your name. None of it I found to be true. I found him incredibly approachable. Woody’s a shy, private man and he’s not someone you’d stand around bullsh---ing and cracking jokes with, necessarily. But we had lovely chats and I found him to be really specific as a director.
In Cassandra’s Dream, McGregor is Ian, the straitlaced older brother with pie-in-the-sky dreams. Farrell is an inveterate gambler who is clearly on a crash course. Throughout their lives, they’d been bailed out by a rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson) living in the U.S. But one day — as both their worlds threaten to crash around them financially — the uncle shows up with a deal-with-the-devil, in return for the many favours.
“My upbringing is very different from the family in this film,” McGregor said. “You know, I grew up in the countryside in Scotland. More from seeing it than playing it, I realize that Ian doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing. He has this vague idea that if he puts all of his money into this business idea in California, life will be great. He’ll go there with his bird and have happy ever after.
“And if he does go there, I’m sure he’ll lose all his money and she’ll run off with some actor and he’ll be f---ing left alone and penniless. Ian just thinks life’s better around the corner.”
McGregor famously had his own search for life around the corner in 2005, with a three-month, 15,000-mile motorcycle trip from Scotland to South Africa with his actor friend Charlie Boorman. Since then, he has made up for lost time, filming Cassandra’s Dream as well as two more upcoming thrillers, Incendiary and The Tourist — both co-starring Brokeback Mountain’s Michelle Williams. The Tourist, which also stars Hal Jackman, wrapped at the beginning of the year.
Next up: A theatre stint in London playing Iago in Othello from November to February.
“You’re called upon to tap into all kinds of things as an actor,” he said. “That’s what’s fantastic and interesting.”
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