The Ghost isn't politically-minded, but it's a well-paying job and so he agrees to step in at the last minute to polish off the book. However, as he begins to learn more about Lang through one-on-one interviews and time spent with Lang's wife and close advisors, The Ghost finds himself caught up in a twisted tale which could get him killed.
At the LA press day for the Summit Entertainment release, McGregor said he didn't think the backstory was necessary. "I read the script first, but there’s not a great deal of information about him in the script or the book, to be honest, The Ghost. But I think that’s purposefully done on the part of Robert Harris, and then Harris and Polanski when they wrote the script," explained McGregor. "He’s called The Ghost and there’s a ghostly quality to him in that he’s amongst all of these people, but we don’t know very much about him. I didn’t feel like I needed much more than what was on the page in the script, because they wrote him really clearly, I felt. I played him exactly as I read him when I first read the script, because I didn’t feel like I needed much more."
"I mean, the kind of things that I thought about [were] we knew that there’s the ghostwriting side and we know that he’s written some best sellers about kind of cheesy celebrities – a magician and a pop or rock star or something. And then we knew in the book that he also went to Cambridge, which is where Lang, the ex-British Prime Minister, went to University. So normally or stereotypically, a British actor would probably play someone that went to Cambridge with a standard English accent, like Olivia [Williams'] English accent. It’s beautiful when she speaks it, but when I use it I find it makes me feel posh, and it makes me feel kind of upper-class in a sense, that accent."
"I liked the idea that The Ghost was already out of his depth because he was writing the memoirs of the ex-British Prime Minister and he was someone who was used to writing memoirs of celebrities and magicians and pop stars. So he’s already kind of out of his depth, and I wanted him to be socially out of his class as well, because we’re obsessed with it in Britain. We can’t seem to get away with it," said McGregor, laughing. "So I mainly thought about that."
And McGregor found inspiration for the character from an unusual source. "There’s a real highbrow kind of intellectual critic show on BBC 2 in Britain late at night when no one’s watching, and there’s these three guys. There’s this guy who sounds a bit like The Ghost, or The Ghost sounds a bit like him, and he’s an intellectual but he’s got a quite strong London accent. There’s an Irishman and then there’s a woman, and the three of them are extraordinarily intellectual. I liked that. And this guy’s clearly a very educated man, but he has quite a London-sounding accent, and I used that as an idea for The Ghost."
As for working with Oscar winner Roman Polanski (The Pianist), McGregor says it was an interesting experience. "I only spoke to Roman on the telephone before we started, before I met him in Germany, because he was in Switzerland at the time and I think I was shooting The Men Who Stare at Goats in New Mexico and Puerto Rico," recalled McGregor. "So we didn’t actually get to meet before I turned up to start. I was doing costume fitting when he came in, and he’s an iconic man and a legendary director, so for an actor it was quite nerve-wracking to meet him."
"I was excited to meet him and he was very hostly, and he’s kind of like a host before you get on set, because there’s two kind of different men, I think, in there," joked McGregor. "But when you’re off set, he’s making you coffee and making sure everyone’s all right. And then when you start working, be it on the text or actually on the set, he’s very direct. His direction is not guarded or sugarcoated in any way. He’s really quite brusque, almost, with his direction. But the direction is always very interesting. It’s not a coincidence that he’s considered to be a great filmmaker, because he is a great filmmaker."
McGregor said taking direction - and criticism - from Polanski was just a matter of listening to him and following exactly what he had to say. "[...]More often than...no, all of the time, he seems to be right. It’s kind of annoying, but when you try it, it seems to be like, 'Oh yeah, he’s right.'"
McGregor added, "But I went through a process with him, because we’re quite sensitive, actors, and if it’s not considered to be good or right, and Polanski wouldn’t worry about telling you that it was wrong, then it can hurt your feelings. But I have to say I realized very quickly that he was like that with everybody; he directed the props guy and the painter and the set dresser in exactly the same way. In fact, all of our camera crew were Polish, and they were in between setups or whatever, and he was often hanging out with them and you could hear them telling jokes in Polish. They were his buddies and he was almost the toughest with them, when he was directing where the camera should be or whatever. And so I realized it’s not a personal thing. It’s just absolutely about his manner about how he directs."
