Ewan McGregor avoided The Shining for years because he was too scared to watch it
Ewan McGregor is hoping audiences will rush to see him in Doctor Sleep (out. Nov 8), director Mike Flanagan’s sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic, The Shining. But, when he was growing up, McGregor himself was in no hurry to view Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel.
“It took me years to watch The Shining because I’d just heard it was so scary,” the Scottish actor tells EW.
McGregor was initially put off the horror genre after being traumatized by John Carpenter’s 1978 movie Halloween.
“I watched Halloween when I was about 13 or 14,” says the actor. “I went away with a pipe band I played into Holland. We were playing in the streets of Den Bosch in Holland. One night, the people who had had us over there, in a little screening room, showed Halloween to a bunch of kids! I don’t know what they were doing! F—ing sadists! And when we left, the projectionist, he’d hung a towel up outside the door, a wet towel, so as we left, we walked into this wet towel. [It] freaked everyone out. And then I just realized that horror films weren’t for me.”
In Doctor Sleep, McGregor plays the grown-up Danny Torrance, the young boy with special powers from The Shining. The film costars Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, and Jacob Tremblay.
Watch the trailer for Doctor Sleep above.
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