Esther McGregor was sure she had botched her audition for Pedro Almodóvar's long-awaited English-language debut, The Room Next Door.
The actress, model, musician, and tattoo artist (who was also very creative, energetic, and active) was shooting a short film at the time (as a bonus) and wasn't really paying attention to the projects she was being asked to record. So she quickly read the dialogues she was sent – perhaps not with the usual care and attention she might normally have – and emailed the recording.
“And about two minutes after I sent it in, I went back to check again, and I saw Almodovar’s name and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I screwed it, I screwed my chance!’” she says, speaking from Nova Scotia on a rare day off from filming Amazon’s upcoming miniseries “You Were Liars.”
Almodóvar is clearly the kind of director any actor should be keen to work with at any stage of their career. But for McGregor, a self-confessed “world cinema geek,” he was a director she simply adored, studied passionately in school, and whose library she would look at “in awe” time and time again. “I was so disappointed in myself.”
Fortunately, this disappointment was unwarranted. About three months later, in late 2023—and without any reaction or feedback—she received a phone call telling her that the role, appearing alongside Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, was hers.
McGregor was on the set of another film when she found out — A24’s Babygirl, directed by Halina Rein and starring Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas. Banderas, of course, is someone who knows Almodóvar well (eight films together and counting). “So when I told him I got the part, he said, ‘No way!’”
Naturally, the two then took a quick selfie and sent it to the director.
“It was a very strange experience,” she says. “I had to look at the scene not twice, but three times, and I was like, ‘Are you for real?’ Then I went back and watched the audition tape and thought, ‘OK!’”
Although she admits her roles in “Babygirl” and “The Room Next Door” were small, they are small roles that have given the 22-year-old actress — just a few years into her acting career — the rare and prestigious achievement of having two films screened in competition at Venice. They are also two of the most controversial films to premiere at the Lido this year (both of which have few details as producers try to keep things under wraps).
“The Room Next Door” — Almodóvar’s first English-language feature — is another comedic family drama from the acclaimed director, this time, according to the limited notes, about “a very imperfect mother and her disaffected daughter,” who live separate lives due to “a profound misunderstanding” (a completely dialogue-free trailer released recently by Sony Pictures Classics offered few additional clues to the story). “Baby Girl,” on the other hand, is a sultry thriller in which Kidman’s powerful CEO begins an illicit affair with a younger, more attractive intern (played by Harris Dickinson).
For McGregor, who plays Kidman and Panera's “dirty” teenage daughter in “Baby Girl,” her role had a strangely personal element.
“A lot of my personal life and the things I went through with my family, and the dynamics of that, were weirdly replicated on screen, in a completely opposite way where I was dealing with my mother instead of my father,” she explained candidly.
McGregor's father is none other than Ewan McGregor, another big name in this already exciting mix. McGregor stars in “Baby Girl” at the same age she was when her father publicly split from her mother, Eve Mavrakis, and began a relationship with — and later married — his “Fargo” co-star Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
“For me, that was the age where you changed and realized that your parents are human, and you screwed up and made mistakes and made decisions that might not be in the best interest of other people,” she says. “So it was really interesting to look back on that from a different perspective. I’m 22 now and all this shit with my family happened when I was 16, so with my newfound closure and understanding of my own path, I was able to find a new voice with this character, and I thought that was really special.”
Esther McGregor in The Room Next Door
McGregor admits that her relationship with her father was strained, and there were years after the family split when they didn't speak. But it was actually her first major production role that helped start the healing process.
Despite loving acting in the first place and spending much of her childhood on her father's sets around the world (“magical places – my Disneyland… even though I hate Disneyland”), she did not begin pursuing it professionally until later in life (she says her parents “never let her” pursue acting as a child).
Her dislike of boredom led her to turn to music, first piano and then guitar. During Covid, she founded the band French Thyme with fellow musician Leo Major, and although they have released an EP – mostly fun electronic pop on which she also sings – she insists that the music is for her own creativity (“It’s the one thing I have complete control over”).
Her passion for art also led her to become a tattoo artist, earning her license and opening a shop with a friend in New York City after moving there from Los Angeles (where her family had immigrated from the UK when she was 11). In New York, she also began modeling professionally (though her first campaign was with her older sister Clara in Los Angeles), and soon began doing fashion shoots and runway shows, opening the Miu Miu spring/summer 2023 show in Milan (after being chosen by Miuccia Prada). “I do a lot of runway,” she laughs, “but I’m also 5’4, so I shouldn’t be doing a lot of runway!”
But it wasn't until all of these careers started to look good that she came to the forefront of acting, through a random audition request that came while she was in college in New York. The project was the Disney+ series “Obi Wan-Kenobi,” which of course stars her father in the lead role.
“I just thought I'd do it for fun, to see what would come out of it,” she says.
There was a phone call. Then director Deborah Chow called (when she was outside her shop about to have a tattoo session).
“She said, ‘I just want to let you know that I haven’t told your dad about this yet, but we’re going to give you the role, and I really want you to know that this isn’t because of your dad,’ which was really sweet of her,” she says. “So I said, ‘Just do me a favor, don’t tell him yet, let’s surprise him with this.’ And that’s literally what she did on set.”
Additionally, not only does McGregor appear in the series, but Esther — in a small role in the second episode — plays drug dealer Tetha Gregg who is actually trying to sell Obi-Wan Kenobi spices (something she says she “tried not to think about too much” given her father's previous battles with addiction).
While the scene may have been brief, McGregor says acting alongside her father for the first time was “a big step in our relationship” and “really helped rekindle” things between them after years of taking space to deal with everything that had happened with her family. “But I think now I really want to work with my dad again.”
Which brings us to the subject of “Children of Nebo,” which MacGregor says is a badge she wears with pride.
“Of course, my dad is an actor in the industry, and I was very privileged to be able to grow up on sets and discover my love for acting at a young age – I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I hadn’t been in the industry,” she says. But while having a movie star father is something McGregor acknowledges “opened doors” and she “never wants to diminish” what he gave her, she stresses that it didn’t book her jobs.
“If I was a jerk, I would be a jerk,” she says. “So I definitely recognize that privilege. I don’t think I would ever accept being called a Nebo kid in a negative light. If you want to, you can, but I’m not going to let it devalue the hard work I put into this. If I wanted to sit on my ass, I wouldn’t be working now.”
McGregor says she just wants to work on acting. And while the Nova Scotia TV project — which won’t be finished until October — means she won’t be able to celebrate The Room Next Door or Baby Girl in Venice, she seems perfectly happy to stay with the production. When a co-producer told her he was looking forward to a break because he was “so tired,” she says her response was, “No! I’d better go straight to another set!” As she puts it, “That’s what keeps me going.”
Modeling came second (travel was a bit exhausting anyway), music she could take with her (the guitar was off-camera on our Zoom call) and tattoos, and while she has since left the New York shop for her friend to run, there is a “really good client base” happy to wait months until she is free (McGregor also says that many of the film crews she has worked with are all heavily tattooed and are eager to “add to their palettes”).
But with her acting career still in its infancy, McGregor is happy to focus on that. She’s also honing her skills by observing those with more experience. Whether it’s Almodóvar’s unique training process (she describes her time on The Room Next Door as “a very beautiful experience” and being “in the presence of love and happiness”) or the way Kidman would meditate before scenes in Baby Girl and then return to the role (a skill she’s been trying to master herself—“I haven’t learned it yet, but someday”), she wants to soak it all up.
Interestingly, the only person she says she's not ready to learn from is her father, at least not yet.
“I have to do that, and I’m working on it, because there are times like the other day, when I came home after eight hours of heavy material, and I was so depressed and it really overwhelmed me, and in that moment, I thought maybe I should call my dad and ask him what he does in situations like this,” she says. “I really want to do that, but there’s this weird part of my head that says, ‘I need to figure this out for myself,’ and then I say, ‘Okay, I get this.’ Because it’s such a great joy to be able to talk to someone who’s so close to you and get that kind of insight, it really is, and it’s just my personal stuff that gets in the way of that.”
