In September last year, it was announced that Ewan McGregor, the 54-year-old Scottish actor, had been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The news item happened to pop up on the feed of Michael Grandage, the theatre director who worked with McGregor in the mid-2000s on two productions, Guys and Dolls and Othello, both under the Donmar Warehouse umbrella. “I thought, ‘Oh God, how brilliant is that!’” exclaims Grandage, who is 62 and since 2012 has been the artistic director of the Michael Grandage Company. “We hadn’t been in touch for a long time and I just thought that I’d send him a text, because it’s a big well done. It’s not something that a lot of people get, actually. I was looking up who hasn’t got one…”
Grandage and McGregor, who are sitting side by side in a rehearsal space in central London, steal a glance at each other and erupt, simultaneously, in loud howls.
