Ewan McGregor, Britain’s most successful young actor, has launched a savage attack on the nation’s film funding bodies, saying they are refusing to back him because of his Hollywood stardom.

McGregor, whose current movie Moulin Rouge has taken more than £40m worldwide, says UK funding boards turned down requests for help on his latest Scottish project because of his celebrity status.

The actor says the boards’ anti-success attitude was making it increasingly difficult to produce money-making films in Britain.

Personal Appeal

McGregor spoke out after several film funding bodies turned down requests for financial assistance on Young Adam - a film adapted from the novel by Scot Alexander Trocchi, which was due to start filming in Glasgow two weeks ago. McGregor appealed personally to the boards after a major backer pulled out on the eve of production, but says he was refused at all turns.

"We went everywhere we could think of in Britain to try and get the money we needed to make the film - Filmfour, the British Film Commission, everywhere, but they wouldn’t give me any money because I’m well known," McGregor said. "What we are supposed to do is make a film with no stars in it, which makes me despair. I have always tried to stay in Britain and make British movies. I’m a British actor, my career is based on my British work and I am not being funded in Britain because I am successful."

Encourages Defectors

McGregor added that this kind of refusal would only encourage more home-grown talent to defect to Hollywood. "A lot of actors, actresses and directors become famous in Britain and go straight to America: I never wanted to do that," he said. "I am not American and want to make British films, but it seems to be getting harder and harder. All we needed for Young Adam was some more cash. It has been refinanced with money that is probably not from Britain."

Shooting on the film, in which McGregor will play the lead opposite Tilda Swinton, will commence next spring after a foreign backer stepped in. The movie tells the tale of a loner who gets work travelling on a barge between Glasgow and Edinburgh, when he finds the body of a woman in the canal.

The attack by McGregor, the nation’s most bankable male star after Sir Sean Connery, will heap further pressure on film funding bodies, which have been accused of wasting millions of pounds on projects that will never be commercially successful.

Questions Asked

Evidence from the European Union Lumiere project to track actual ticket sales revealed this summer that one film, Life Of Stuff, had sold only 304 tickets at the UK box office despite having been awarded a lottery grant of £1m. Of five Scottish film productions which shared more than £3m in lottery cash in recent years, by this summer only one - The Winter Guest, starring Emma Thompson - had earned enough at the box office to pay back part of its grant.

In January the Film Council, set up by the government to oversee financing of British films, came under fire for "wasting" nearly £100m of lottery money. Only one of 11 films it had funded, An Ideal Husband, starring Rupert Everett and Minnie Driver, recouped the investment.

However, amongst the ‘failures’ were critical successes such as Ratcatcher, There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble and Hideous Kinky, and the major players in the film funding world have rejected McGregor’s claims.

Reassurances Requested

The council said the actor - who is a partner in his own production company, Natural Nylon - had simply not provided enough reassurance about the viability of Young Adam. The council said that McGregor had approached it and not the British Film Commission. While it was true the body had rejected his immediate call for cash, this had nothing to do with his star status.

"He came to the Film Council and asked for money, but there were concerns over the budget for the film," said a spokesman. "We asked if they could redress that and said we would certainly consider it, but we never heard from them again. We would never turn productions down purely on the basis of who was starring in the film."

Filmfour could not be contacted for comment and Scottish Screen said it would have tried to help if it had been asked.

The Admirable McGregor

Kevin Cowle, locations operations manager with Scottish Screen, said: "I don’t think it is the case at all that we would reject Ewan McGregor. I think there’s a fear he might be too expensive. People have a great deal of admiration for what he is saying. It is everybody’s hope that we can keep home-grown stars here. He’s an international star - the star of Star Wars - and people think it’s not worth asking him because his agent would just turn it down. If that’s not the case, then great. If we can embrace people like him and make it worth their while staying, that would be great. We are trying to put money into projects that are likely to make money. We are in favour of getting big names."

The Lottery Winners Are …

The Winter Guest, starring Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law, is one of the only grant-aided films in recent years to have made enough money to start paying back the lottery funds it received. By March it had already started repaying the £1m it had been awarded.

Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher won widespread critical acclaim but has, according to the last available figures, not yet made enough at the box office to repay its grant. The movie, set in Glasgow during the 1978/79 bin-collectors’ strike, was awarded more than £600,000 of its £2m production costs from lottery funds.

An Ideal Husband, with two bankable stars in Rupert Everett and Minnie Driver, is one of the most successful lottery-funded films of recent times. Its makers Pathe were awarded £1m, and the film quickly recouped that at the box office, with multi-million pound takings both here and in America.