While Ewan McGregor (‘Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens’,’Trainspotting’) might be playing a grown-up version of Danny Torrance in the upcoming release of ‘Doctor Sleep‘, the actor didn’t see ‘The Shining‘ for quite a few years after it was released. It wasn’t from a lack of interest, a fear of Stephen King movies, or anything else along those lines either. In fact, it all boiled down to ‘Halloween.’ Specifically, his viewing of the 1978 John Carpenter classic ‘Halloween.’
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How could the slasher film have caused McGregor not to check out ‘The Shining,’ you might wonder? The actor shares a fun little story that explains it away:
“It took me years to watch The Shining because I’d just heard it was so scary. I watched Halloween when I was about 13 or 14. I went away with a pipe band I played into Holland. We were playing in the streets of Den Bosch in Holland. One night, the people who had had us over there, in a little screening room, showed Halloween to a bunch of kids! I don’t know what they were doing! F—ing sadists! And when we left, the projectionist, he’d hung a towel up outside the door, a wet towel, so as we left, we walked into this wet towel. [It] freaked everyone out. And then I just realized that horror films weren’t for me.”
While McGregor may have decided that he didn’t want to get into horror films, we know that times have changed as he is now in the sequel to one of the greatest films of all time. It will be interesting to see if it lives up to the legacy of the Stephen King-inspired film by Stanley Kubrick.
Do you feel that watching horror at too young of an age would turn you off of it for years to come? Would you have thought that an early teenager would have fallen into that category? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Entertainment Weekly
