Ewan McGregor brought the house down at Edinburgh’s Central Hall las night with a once-in-a-lifetime re-enactment of his 1992 performance in Joe Orton’s play What the Butler Saw at Salisbury Playhouse. Fully clothed, the actor gave an athletic display of what occurred that fateful night, when, naked but for a policeman’s helmet over his groin, McGregor not only tripped and fell, he dropped the helmet and gave the audience a very intimate view of his private parts. Despite an unusual number of shocked elderly ladies present, the result was “the biggest round of applause I’ve ever had in my life.”

The anecdote followed a frank discussion of the actor’s once-fearless approach to nudity, which saw him stripping off in films as varied as Velvet Goldmine, The Pillow Book and Young Adam. Now 55, McGregor admitted that, if he were starting out today, in these times of intimacy coordinators, he might not be so bold. “We didn’t have social media in those days,” he mused. “It was much better. Nobody was screen-grabbing your naked ass.”

McGregor was in town partly to present a live commentary of his 1994 breakthrough film, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, but mostly because Scotland is where he lives now. Speaking to the Berlinale’s Artistic Director Tricia Tuttle, McGregor explained that his career had come full circle; though he continues working in the States, he has largely relocated to Perthshire where he hopes, like James McAvoy, to stimulate the arts scene in his home country. One of the first fruits of this endeavor will occur next year at the nearby Pitlochry Festival Theatre, where he will take to the stage with Alan Cumming for a version of Harry Macqueen’s 2020 film Supernova.

Discussing his passion for biking, McGregor revealed plans for more adventures in the Long Way Round documentary series, as well as a spinoff show following his attempts to cross the Atlantic in a renovated yacht. Though he accepted that he has probably “missed the boat” when it comes to playing James Bond in the rebooted Eon franchise, McGregor expressed his affection of the often-maligned Star Wars trilogy he appeared in and dropped heavy hints that he wasn’t done with his character, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Surprisingly, he said, he hadn’t jumped at the chance when Lucas first came to him. “Deciding to do it was hard,” he said. “I mean, it does sound like that’s not true, but it was. I remember phoning Danny [Boyle]. I phoned my uncle Dennis [Lawson]. I spoke to anybody that I respected about it, asking, ‘What do you think?’ Because at that point I was already doing these [artier] films in the early part of my career. I didn’t think of myself as being somebody in that kind of thing. And then the closer I got to it, the more I wanted to do it. But still, I did them, and they were hard because they’re not indie.

“It’s a different experience,” he continued. “You’re not really trying to find [the character’s interior life]. The job of an actor in those films is a very different one than The Pillow Book or something, when you’re really trying to discover someone’s emotional life. It’s different. So, I did them, and I enjoyed them, and they were not well received. And so that was weird and hard — to sort of put yourself into something like that, and then for them to be really dragged through the month by the critics. But I learned a lot about not giving a sh*t.”

McGregor, however, was pleasantly surprised, many years later, to find out that there actually is a passionate fanbase out there for his three Star Wars movies. “The truth is, I didn’t know that when we made the series [Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi]. I found that out later when they premiered the series. They showed it at a Star Wars convention in California. And I’d never been to one. I never went to conventions, or anything like that. But then when we went to the premiere, they played the first two episodes. I had many thousands of people behind me, and I felt a rush there. When I started signing autographs, I started meeting people who we made those films for: They were children when we made them. And then I started realizing that [those films] were loved.”

The actor still thinks fondly of Obi-Wan, partly because he is now getting closer to the age Alec Guinness was when he played the part in the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. “He was in his 60s when he played that role, where I was doing it when I was 25, 26 or something like that. It was hard to make that work. But when I went back, I was in my late 40s.”

“I’d really like to do it again,” he added, “because at the end of the original series, me and Liam [Neeson] just wander off. There’s got to be a great story, or maybe two, or maybe three.” He laughed. “Or a series…”

Spider-Man: Brand New Day continues to fly high in its third weekend at the box office as it fends off newcomers The End of Oak Street and PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie.

Sony Pictures‘ Brand New Day pulled in $19 million on Friday as it heads to $67 million, which will top the domestic box office for its third consecutive frame. This would bring the Tom Holland-led feature’s North American total to $782.8 million for its first 17 days to stand at No. 5 on the all-time domestic chart, just behind Avatar at $785.2 million and topping the No. 6 total of $718 million for Top Gun: Maverick.

Warner Bros.’ dinosaur-centric sci-fi survival feature The End of Oak Street grossed $8.1 million on Friday, including Thursday previews, as it eyes an opening weekend around $20 million. Earning a B CinemaScore from audiences, David Robert Mitchell‘s film launched in 3,400 North American theaters and carries an $80 million production budget.

Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor star in the movie about a family in the early 1980s whose suburban neighborhood has landed in a place teeming with prehistoric predators. It holds an 85 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating from critics, while its audience score stands at 77. In his review of The End of Oak Street for The Hollywood Reporter, chief film critic David Rooney called the movie “mindlessly entertaining in a big-dumb-fun kind of way.”

PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie chased down $7.3 million on Friday, including previews on Thursday and last Saturday, as Paramount Pictures now expects it to also land in the vicinity of $20 million domestically for its opening weekend. Earning an A CinemaScore from audiences to match what the previous sequel PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie received, Dino Movie opened in more than 3,500 locations in North America and has added $38.3 million from 52 overseas markets. It has a $39.5 million production budget.

Carter Young, Mckenna Grace, Terry Crews, Jennifer Hudson and Snoop Dogg are among the voice stars for director Cal Brunker’s film that brings the Paw Patrol canine heroes to a world containing dinosaurs. The previous sequel, 2023’s The Mighty Movie, opened to $22.7 million domestically in late September. That project’s $205 million global run improved upon the $144 million worldwide total for 2021’s original PAW Patrol: The Movie, which adapted the series that first launched on Nick Jr. in 2013.

PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie holds an 84 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. THR critic Frank Scheck wrote that, “while the material is thoroughly juvenile, the films impart valuable messages to their impressionable viewers.”

With Oak Street and Dino Movie battling it out for third place, Universal’s The Odyssey will remain at No. 2 for its fifth weekend as it looks to collect $23 million to bring its domestic cume to $504.4 million.

During the week, Spider-Man: Brand New Day added to its array of records as director Destin Daniel Cretton‘s movie became the fastest title to swing past the $700 million mark at the domestic box office.

More to come.