An excellent young actor with a remarkable career track, McGregor has rocketed to prominence in the space of six years, thanks to a brilliant turn as a heroin addict in Trainspotting and the tremendous good fortune of being hired to play the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the three Star Wars prequels, the first of which, Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, was released with much hoopla in 1999. As a result of his being cast in the new trilogy, a great deal of media attention has been focused on this young actor (who, ironically, follows his Uncle, Denis Lawson (who played pilot Wedge Antilles), into the Star Wars universe.)

McGregor was born in the Scottish coastal town of Crieff. After the normal run of school, he joined the Perth Repertory Theatre, and then went on to train at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.His studies at Guildhall led to a key role in Dennis Potter's Lipstick On Your Collar, a historical drama set during the Suez Crisis. He also appeared in The Scarlet And The Black, another historical adaptation, this time taking the lead. Ironically, his first big-screen appearance was a brief one, playing a bit part in Bill Forsyth's episodic Being Human. McGregor continued to turn up on television on both sides of the Atlantic until late 1996; he played a beleaguered gunman in an episode of ER, and turned up in the "Cold War" episode of Tales From The Crypt.

His breakthrough in motion pictures came with Shallow Grave, a stylish, noir-influenced feature directed by Danny Boyle, in which McGregor essayed the role of Alex, a journalist who finds himself in a horrendous position after a murder. He quickly went on to appear in the British surfing parable Blue Juice and Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book before losing almost thirty pounds and shaving his head for his turn as heroin addict Mark Renton in the critically acclaimed Trainspotting, working once again with Danny Boyle. Having gained the attention of critics and audiences worldwide with this performance, McGregor proceeded to take something of a stylistic left turn by taking the role of Frank Churchill in the elegant historical comedy Emma. (McGregor, meanwhile, was extremely outspoken on the subject of another Emma adaptation, Clueless.)

McGregor continued working at an impressive pace after Emma, appearing in Brassed Off, Nightwatch, The Serpent's Kiss and yet another feature for Danny Boyle, the screwy fantasy A Life Less Ordinary. This latter film concluded on a raffish note, with an animated puppet of McGregor dressed in a kilt, apparently in the MacGregor tartan. In 1998, McGregor began his work on the Star Wars prequels, and appeared in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, in which he played a gay, David Bowie-like singer during the glam-rock era of the 1970s.

In 1999, along with his role in The Phantom Menace, McGregor appeared as infamous financeer Nick Leeson in the biopic Rogue Trader, and had a full slate of projects before him, including several for his own production company, Natural Nylon (co-founded with Jude Law and Sean Pertwee, amongst others). He is expected to begin work on the second Star Wars prequel in the year 2000.