EWAN MCGREGOR ON THE RISE; HOT, BUSY ACTOR REFRESHINGLY UNIMPRESSED WITH HIMSELF : AESTHETIC CHALLENGES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Remember that one skinny Scottish junkie in ``Trainspotting'' who, unlike his mates, sort of understood that there was more to life than committing crime and getting stoned?

Ewan McGregor was good casting for that. Star of the most successful British film since ``Four Weddings and a Funeral,'' McGregor is Britain's hottest new actor since Hugh Grant, with a passle of pictures awaiting release and the inside track to play Obi Wan Kenobi in the upcoming ``Star Wars'' prequel.

But don't expect him to push any self-destruct buttons, even if McGregor's dry Scottish wit and his willingness to do just about anything in front of a camera have earned him a budding bad-boy reputation.

In truth, McGregor, 26, is a devoted husband and father who avoids the increasingly bright spotlight and has little interest in the red-hot London club scene - although he could easily be the toast of it. A few drinks at the local pub and quiet time at home with his French wife, Eve, and their 16-month-old daughter, Clara, are his sensible ideas of a starry night.

Don't accuse him of being conservative, though.

``Oh no, the last thing you could call me is conservative,'' McGregor said in a soft burr during a phone conversation from New York. ``No, I'm living life the way I want to live it, that's all. I got married because I fell in love with this woman, we had the baby because we wanted to have children. But that's not because of some philosophical ideal at all, no.''

McGregor's political leanings are pretty apparent in his latest stateside release, ``Brassed Off.'' It details how the closing of a coal mine affects a small English town and its local brass band. McGregor plays one of the younger miner-musicians, ``The Lost World's'' Pete Postlethwaite is the aging conductor with black lung disease and Tara Fitzgerald is the band's single female member and McGregor's love interest.

An odd mixture of musical, comedy and working-class social tract, the film takes strong issue with the economic policies of Britain's long-ruling, recently trounced Conservative Party, which shut down a number of mines in the 1980s and early '90s.

``I was attracted to `Brassed Off' mostly for the politics of it,'' McGregor admitted. ``I agreed with them and thought it was a very important film to make. I liked the character humor of it, too; if you're going to have a political movie, putting the politics forward through humor is a better way of of not browbeating your audience.''

There was a nostalgia factor involved, too.

``I used to play French horn in school a lot,'' said McGregor, who was raised by two teachers in Crieff, Scotland, but put music on the back burner to follow his uncle Denis Lawson (``Local Hero'') into acting. ``Not that I could play nearly as well as the experts in the film. But I could hold a tune, almost.''

From music to, um, art. ``The Pillow Book'' (opening in L.A. June 6) should make it abundantly obvious that McGregor is game for the most daring aesthetic challenges.

The latest gorgeously conceived, intellectualized outrage from Peter Greenaway (``Prospero's Books,'' ``The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover''), ``Pillow'' charts the sexual obsession of a young Japanese woman (Vivian Wu), who wants her lovers to draw beautiful calligraphy on her nude body.

McGregor plays a bisexual English translator with bad handwriting. When he convinces the woman that she should write on him, she falls madly in love. Then things get really weird.

``I don't claim to understand it,'' McGregor said with a laugh. ``I probably get half of what (Greenaway) is trying to say in there. I think the basic idea is to study the pleasures of literature and the pleasures of the flesh, and if the two can become one.''

McGregor spends a lot of time exposing his own flesh in ``The Pillow Book.''

``I was naked so much that, after a whAile, it was no big deal,'' he said. ``As long as it's in the movie for a good reason, I don't mind. I never had any trepidation about it, and after a while, people on the set got used to it.''

Although he has a tendency to play human parchment, drug addicts and murderous roommates (in his breakthrough film, ``Shallow Grave''), McGregor can also behave himself on screen, as he did in last year's acclaimed Jane Austen adaptation ``Emma.'' And, although nothing has been finalized yet, it looks like the actor's next job will be the ultimate straight-arrow hero.

``It's looking pretty good; they would like me to play Obi Wan Kenobi and I certainly want to do it,'' McGregor said. ``What do you say? Mr. Lucas' people are talking to my people.''

`Star Wars' pedigree

McGregor even has the proper pedigree for a ``Star Wars'' prequel. Uncle Lawson played X-wing fighter jockey Wedge Antilles in all three previous films.

Before that, though, we'll see McGregor in ``A Life Less Ordinary,'' the first American-set movie made by his ``Shallow Grave''/``Trainspotting'' director Danny Boyle. It's a comic fantasy, co-starring Cameron Diaz, involving kidnapping, angels, class conflict and love.

There's also a horror movie, ``Nightwatch,'' and a period costume drama, ``The Serpent's Kiss,'' in the can. And he just agreed to star in ``Eye of the Beholder,'' a psychological noir thriller being directed by Australia's Stephan Elliott (``The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'').

``I'm happy if I do three or four films a year,'' McGregor said, refreshingly unimpressed with himself. ``I try to keep my head about it. I realize that most of the hype stuff should be about the movies as opposed to being all about me.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) ``If you're going to have a political movie, putting the politics forward through humor is a better way of not browbeating your audience,'' says Ewan McGregor of ``Brassed Off,'' his latest stateside release.

(2) ``I don't claim to understand it,'' sAays McGregor of ``The Pillow Book,'' opening in L.A. June 6.