Ewan McGregor found it a bit of a "brain-twister" learning two sides of a conservation to play Jesus Christ and Satan in ‘Last Days in the Desert’.
The 45-year-old actor teamed up with his long-standing body double Nash Edgerton to help him successfully portray the two characters.
He said: "It’s a funny one. I suggested Nash – I’d known him for years, since ‘Moulin Rouge’, and then he doubled me in ‘Star Wars’. Ever since then, like once or twice a year he’s doubled me in something. He’s a great friend of mine.
"So on this movie, after I suggested him to Rodrigo to do the stunt supervising because I’ve always felt very safe in Nash’s hands, I realised I needed somebody to act with. We were all staying in this little hotel and every night we would get back and work on what the next scene was between Yeshua and the Demon. It was odd, because you’d have to learn one side of it and then swap and learn the other side of it, and it’s a bit of a brain-twister because you don’t really learn the other lines while someone else is saying them.
And whilst most would find it "odd" acting alongside themselves, McGregor is glad he had Edgerton by his side as he has perfected the exact "rhythms" of his own speech.
He added to Vulture magazine: "But the truth is, it really wasn’t as odd as it should have been. I think it’s because Nash was so concentrated, so when we would do a scene where I’d be Yeshua and he’d be the demon and then we would swap, he’d copy the rhythms that I’d just done.
"He’d say the lines in much the same way as I’d said them, using the same intonation – if there was a pause, he’d make the pause the same length. He was really skilled at copying what I had done, so it was the same scene and the rhythms were the same and so it was easy to key into."
Ewan McGregor’s ‘brain-twisting’ role
