Ewan McGregor: I feel like I did in my twenties and I want to be sexy and cool when I’m old

Ewan McGregor says he feels no different to when he was in his twenties.

The 46-year-old recently returned to one of his most famous roles, Renton, in the sequel to Danny Boyle’s 1996 cult hit Trainspotting — released when McGregor was 24.

But the Scottish actor said: “I just don’t think about ageing much. You should behave the way you feel, not the way you think you’re supposed to.

“I don’t feel any different to when I was in my twenties. It’s not that I haven’t learned anything. But I still go about life as I did. I choose my work with my gut and I throw myself into it.”

He told Esquire magazine: “Men don’t let go of this feeling that we’re cool and desirable and funny ... I don’t want to let go of that. I won’t! Why should I? I know lots of old men who are sexy and cool, I’m going to be one of those guys, I hope.”

Speaking about watching last year’s Oasis documentary Supersonic, he said: “I was f****** bawling at the end. Just take me back, I want to be in the Nineties again. Because it was a great time to be... well, me! It was! F****** amazing.

“The Trainspotting team were the Oasis of the movie world ... which I think was down to Danny [Boyle, the film’s director]. We made a change in British cinema.”

He said Boyle, with whom he also worked on 1994’s Shallow Grave, “defined me all those years ago. No one else gets better work out of me.”

McGregor recently made his directing debut with American Pastoral, based on the Philip Roth novel: “It’s period, it’s drama, it’s based on a Pulitzer Prize book. I’m disappointed more people didn’t see it, but they released it a week before the election so America wasn’t in the mood.”

Read the full interview in the June issue of Esquire magazine, out on Tuesday. Also available as a digital edition.