In Sidney

Ewan ghosts into Sydney June 11, 2010 Ewan in Sydney for the opening of his movie The Ghost Writer. Ewan is very fond of Roman Polanski and considers him one of the best directors he has ever worked with. But the British actor does not want to talk about the director’s possible extradition to the US to face a 33-year-old sex charge. “It just doesn’t involve me,” said the star of Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge and three Star Wars movies in Sydney today. Ewan, who stars in Polanski’s new political thriller The Ghost Writer, admits there is a reason for his reticence. The 76-year-old filmmaker has asked to be talked about as a director “and not make any comment because it’s better for him if we don’t”. In The Ghost Writer, which premieres at the Sydney Film Festival on Sunday, Ewan plays a writer hired to pen the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister. Polanski finished the movie while under house arrest in Switzerland, where he faces possible extradition for sentencing over illegal sex with a 13-year-old in 1977. Ewan is far from reserved when it comes to the real-life parallels in a movie that has a fictional ex-British PM, played by Pierce Brosnan, accused of war crimes for authorising the seizure of suspected terrorists who are tortured by the CIA. “It’s pretty obvious that it’s making comment about Tony Blair and Tony Blair’s involvement in the Iraq war,” he said. “The fact that rendition flights and ‘did he torture people on behalf of the American government?’ and all of these things even since we made the film have been coming out ... [It’s] almost life imitating art.” Ewan said the movie urged “that our politicians should be responsible for their actions and held accountable for those actions and I think that’s a good thing.” The 39-year-old actor said he had reservations about the lack of accountability for both the British and American leaders over the treatment of suspected terrorists. ”If you break the law, you break the law. And because you’re the Prime Minister of Great Britain or the president of America, you shouldn’t be above the law. I think Bush has just retired to the golf course - he’s just off - and will never be held accountable for any of the stuff he’s done and I think that’s not right.” Ewan said he remained troubled about Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war. “We’ve never got to the bottom of it – have we? – of what we were told and why we were told we were going into those wars and the reality of the situation, in that there were no weapons of mass destruction ... There’s been no explanation. I think we deserve to have one.”