Why Ewan McGregor Refuses to Wear ‘[Expletive] Horrible’ Faux Facial Hair

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Ewan McGregor wants to go au naturel for roles, and that includes growing his own facial hair as needed.

The “A Gentleman in Moscow” star told The New York Times that he opted to have his own mustache for the Russian Revolution-set Paramount+ Showtime series. He’s had “terrible” experiences in the past with fake hair.

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“I had to,” McGregor said of growing his own mustache. “I couldn’t have a stuck-on mustache. I’ve had them in the past and they’re terrible to wear.”

McGregor continued of the process, “You come in in the morning, you’ve had to shave and then you put glue on that shaved skin, which is [fucking] horrible. Then you stick it on and it stops you from moving your face. The last thing you want to be thinking about when you’re acting is not moving. So I grew my own.”

The SAG-AFTRA strike affected the “A Gentleman in Moscow” production, so McGregor maintained the facial hair until he knew the series was going to wrap. Well, with one key alteration.

“During the strike, I didn’t know when we’d be going back, so I just grew a beard around it, because you don’t want a mustache in your real life,” McGregor said. “I mean, you do if you like mustaches, but I don’t.”

McGregor leads the series alongside wife and fellow actor Mary Elizabeth Winstead, marking their onscreen reunion since first meeting on 2017’s “Fargo.”

“It came to me first,” McGregor said of the “A Gentleman in Moscow” adaptation before Winstead was cast. “I loved the grand nature of the drama, the love and loss and romance. I feel like it’s rarer and rarer to get a chance to play that stuff. At the heart of it, it’s about a man who’s learning to be a husband and learning to be a dad and crawling out of his ideas of the aristocratic way of life to find who he really is.”

IndieWire’s Ben Travers called McGregor’s performance rife with “character-centric charm” in the review of the series.

“McGregor has delivered more great performances in TV than he’s delivered great TV shows and the trend continues with ‘A Gentleman in Moscow,'” the review reads. “It’s not solely an actor’s showcase, but its cast is nonetheless in perfect harmony with the show’s simple message. Sometimes, that’s all you need to hear.”

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