EWAN McGregor is angry. Not with reviews for his new movie musical extravaganza Moulin Rouge! Not with early coverage of the film when he was caught in the crossfire of on-screen leading lady Nicole Kidman's split from husband Tom Cruise with gossip hinting - quite wrongly - there was more to their relationship than friendship.

No, the star of Trainspotting and the latest episodes in the Star Wars saga is upset and annoyed that a film he was set to make in Scotland fell through following financial problems.

Having the private investor putting up 40 per cent of the budget tear up his cheque during pre-production of Young Adam was bad enough. Being turned down for funding by the British Film Commissioner was even worse.

"We went everywhere we could think of to get money," he recalls. "The British Film Commission would not give me any because I am well-known, telling us we should make the film with no stars in it - at which I despair.

"I try to stay in Britain and make British movies. My career is based on my British work but I am not being funded in Britain because I am successful.

"A lot of actors and directors become successful here and go straight to the States, but I've never done that. I want to make British films. It seems to be gettng harder and harder. No one would give us any money. It was a great script and a first time director, all the elements I would have thought for the British Film Commisson to give us money. We needed $1.8m. I was so let down by that.

"I don't know what's going to happen. If you can't make an interesting, dark, erotic piece like Young Adam because it's not considered commercial, then there's no hope for British films. It's such a narrow-minded and stupid way of looking at it, decided by people who aren't creative."

McGregor can, at least, take pleasure in the enthusiastic reviews for Moulin Rouge! in general and his performance in particular. He plays a penniless writer who falls in love with Kidman's showgirl and courtesan at the famous Paris nightclub. He not only gets romantic but sings some of the modern songs (by the likes of Elton John, David Bowie and Paul McCartney) with which director Baz Lurhmann tricks out his musical.

The actor - admittedly more of an Elvis than an Elton fan - has always loved Forties Hollywood musicals and British ones like Half A Sixpence, so singing and dancing in Moulin Rouge! fulfilled an ambition.

"Now that I've done it, people say, 'you must have felt it was a very risky thing to do and dangerous for your career'. But, naively maybe, I never considered that," he says. "It was great to be given the opportunity to do a big studio musical picture like they used to, with Nicole and Baz, and be fairly secure that it would be a classy project.

"We had four months rehearsal, during which I was working with a singing coach, doing dance rehearsals and working on scenes. That was important technically. More than anything, it was four months of Baz sucking us into the world he wanted to create for Moulin Rouge. So by the time we came on the set and had to sing to somebody, it was second nature."

This is not his first screen musical - he played a sex, drugs and rock'n'roll star in Velvet Goldmine. Before that, it was Scottish country dancing after school on Fridays ("I enjoyed that") and performing in his own band, Scarlet Pride, at school discos. Now he's one of our few truly international movie stars, although he's spent a lot of time in Australia of late.

After nine months Down Under working on Moulin Rouge!, he stayed for another five months shooting the upcoming Star Wars movie, Attack Of The Clones, reprising the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Making these films is very hard and difficult work, quite unlike anything he's done before. It's very technical, he says, reacting to things that aren't there but which will be added by computer magic later. "It's really weird. I feel so uninvolved in it. I didn't even know it was called Attack Of The Clones until a journalist in Los Angeles told me," he says.

He dislikes the title ("how would you feel about being in a film called Attack Of The Clones?") while appreciating the recognition it has brought him, especially among children. "I do love them coming up to me and talking about Star Wars because it reminds me of the way I felt about the first three. They want to know the details, like how your light sabre works. It's weird when adults do the same."

He's also found time to make one of those TV celebrity-and-wild-animals documentaries, travelling to remotest Canada to film polar bears. He enjoyed this first taste of presenting to camera without a script as well as finding it "quite reassuring for some reason" that there's still somewhere in the world where you're at risk of being eaten for dinner.

Not that McGregor felt in any danger. "We were fairly well protected," he says. "When we were out on the ice there would be a guy with a rifle and we were never far away from a vehicle. I didn't ever feel endangered. I did feel frightened when the first bear was tranquilised and I went up close and touched it. It was still unconscious but in the back of your mind, even though you know it's been anaethestised, there's the fear it will suddenly go, 'grrrr'."

It's given him a taste for making more documentaries. His next production, however, will be the birth of his and French wife Eve's second child. When daughter Clara, now five, was only weeks old, the family had to decamp to the US where he was making a film.

This time McGregor is determined to be at home and do his share of bringing up baby. "With Clara, it will be like it is for any older child with a baby in the house. She'll need me around, I'm aware of that, and I don't want to be seeing her in the morning and then at night. My mother-in-law could have come over or my mum come down but I want to do it. I'm in a position where I don't want to work when I have a baby and shouldn't be pressurised into thinking that I should."

* Moulin Rouge! (12) is showing in cinemas now.