"Conservative's the last thing I am"
About this Quote
Conservative is a word that suggests caution, deference to precedent, and a preference for the well-traveled road. Ewan McGregor has built a career on the opposite impulse: curiosity, appetite for risk, and a refusal to be boxed in. From the moment he burst onto the scene with Danny Boyle in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, he showed an instinct for raw, transgressive material rather than safe, prestige roles. He leaned into eroticism and experimentation in The Pillow Book, confronted addiction and amorality in Trainspotting, and embraced flamboyant romantic excess in Moulin Rouge without a trace of irony. Even after Star Wars vaulted him into global stardom, he kept chasing unpredictable terrain, from indie dramas like Young Adam to queer-centered projects such as I Love You Phillip Morris and Beginners, where emotional openness was the point rather than a calculated career move.
That same spirit peppers his life outside scripted sets. The Long Way motorbike journeys reveal a restless, outward-looking temperament, more interested in people and places than in cultivating a carefully managed brand. Choosing electric bikes for Long Way Up signaled an environmental curiosity rather than nostalgia for petrol-soaked bravado. As a UNICEF ambassador he has repeatedly put visibility and effort behind humanitarian causes, an extension of his instinct to engage rather than retreat.
He also bristles at prudery and narrowness in public culture, calling out intolerance and declining platforms when they clash with his values. The stance is not simply partisan; it is temperamental. Conservative, as a small-c disposition, prizes safety. McGregor has made a vocation of refusing it. He moves between franchises and art house, musical and noir, blockbuster TV and theater, not to hedge but to stay alive to the work. The point is not rebellion for its own sake, but a commitment to change, experimentation, and empathy. When he says conservative is the last thing he is, it reads as a mission statement for how to live as an artist: keep moving, keep opening, keep risking.
That same spirit peppers his life outside scripted sets. The Long Way motorbike journeys reveal a restless, outward-looking temperament, more interested in people and places than in cultivating a carefully managed brand. Choosing electric bikes for Long Way Up signaled an environmental curiosity rather than nostalgia for petrol-soaked bravado. As a UNICEF ambassador he has repeatedly put visibility and effort behind humanitarian causes, an extension of his instinct to engage rather than retreat.
He also bristles at prudery and narrowness in public culture, calling out intolerance and declining platforms when they clash with his values. The stance is not simply partisan; it is temperamental. Conservative, as a small-c disposition, prizes safety. McGregor has made a vocation of refusing it. He moves between franchises and art house, musical and noir, blockbuster TV and theater, not to hedge but to stay alive to the work. The point is not rebellion for its own sake, but a commitment to change, experimentation, and empathy. When he says conservative is the last thing he is, it reads as a mission statement for how to live as an artist: keep moving, keep opening, keep risking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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