Ewan McGregor Opens Up About His 'Star Wars' TV Role, His Sobriety & Much More In The November Issue Of 'Men's Journal'

The Trainspotting star explained how his sobriety influenced his decision to star in Doctor Sleep, a film based off the Stephen King book that picks up 30 years after the events of The Shining. In the flick, he plays an alcoholic who drinks to keep ghosts at bay, but his character ultimately gets sober.

"I’ve been sober for years. This was the first time I got to explore that in my work. What intrigued me was the fact that when we meet Dan, he’s like a rock-bottom alcoholic, and then finds recovery," he revealed.

The Moulin Rouge star went on to confess why he gave up alcohol. "The rock bottom’s neither here nor there, really. It also wasn’t as hectic as some other people’s. But it’s not a competition. I was just not able to manage all the different strands of my life — my professional life, my family life, and my drinking life. So something had to go. But it was fun to go back and play some real f**ked up drunk scenes. It was quite funny. But it was all still frighteningly alive in me, you know, even after 20 years," he said.

His own frightening experience with a ghost gave him a deeper understanding of the subject matter in Doctor Sleep. "I had an incident when I was at drama school… It was maybe my 19th birthday. I was living in the top room of this house in East London. Everyone had gone home for Easter, and I was alone. I’d nicked someone’s video player from their room. I watched Blue Velvet and I was running a bath and I was standing in my robe. And I had this terrible pain in my back. I ripped off my robe. And there was this burn mark; the back of my robe was scorched. I ran around thinking I caught fire or something," he recalled.