The Big Picture

Bleeding Love
features the real-life father-daughter duo, Ewan McGregor and Clara McGregor.
Ewan McGregor discusses what it was like to work alongside his daughter on the film.
Clara McGregor’s next project focuses on the true story of Julie d’Aubigny, a 17th-century opera singer.

Hollywood may be brimming with films that center around contentious father-daughter relationships, but only Bleeding Love has a real-life father-daughter duo serving up that familial drama to the masses. Penned by Ruby Caster, but born out of a story concept by Clara McGregor and her producing partner Vera Bulder, Bleeding Love is a heart-wrenching story about a father (Ewan McGregor) reconnecting with his estranged daughter (Clara McGregor) after she overdoses, and the road trip they embark on as he secretly drives her to rehab. While the film may be fraught with heightened emotions, screaming matches, and tears, my conversation with the pair of McGregors was all laughs and smiles.

The father-daughter duo joined me over Zoom a few hours after they received a sweet surprise message from Leona Lewis on the Today Show, whose iconic song “Bleeding Love” was an inspiration for the film’s title and a pivotal scene in the film. Somehow, “Bleeding Love” became the anthem of family road trips for a lot of millennials in the mid-aughts, including myself, which is precisely why I asked the McGregors about the song’s inclusion in the film and what it was like to pull inspiration from their own lives.

“That was a real period of time,” Ewan reminisced, “The school run in the morning. Leona Lewis. She did a cover of the Snow Patrol song, is it “Run” or “Blue Car?” I can’t remember which one it was.” Clara was quick to confirm that it was Lewis’ cover of “Run” that he was recalling, which prompted him to continue.

“She does a brilliant cover of that, and that was big. Her songs start small, and they build to, like, huge crescendos at the end, and there was something just so fun about it. But it was like, those two songs would get us from the house to school, really.
When we were thinking of that, when Clara was thinking about that song, that was just the song that sprang to mind [for], you know, “What was it going to be that they sang together?”
We just did a TV show this morning where we got a message from her. It was so nice! It was a really special treat.”

Clara added, “That was a cool, special moment. It was great. I think, also, when you’re writing, when you’re creating something, we all kind of draw from these things, these experiences that we have and stuff that we know, and so being able to filter some of that in was great. It was fun.”

Bleeding Love Release Date February 16, 2024 Director Emma Westenberg Cast Ewan McGregor , Clara McGregor , Kim Zimmer , Sasha Alexander , Devyn McDowell , Jake Weary , Vera Bulder Runtime 1 hr 42 min

Does Working With Your Parent on a Movie Change The Dynamic?

The real-life aspect of Bleeding Love caught my attention as soon as the film was announced, and I was eager to talk with McGregor about working with his daughter when I spoke with him last November. Having worked with my own mother on a major film, I wanted to know what it was like for Clara to work with her father and if that changed their dynamic at all. And while she joked that she finally got to see what a diva he was, it sounds like they had a wonderful time making the movie.

“We had a great time. It was a kind of an amazing experience for a lot of reasons. I mean, we keep saying it, but I think being able to spend that much time with your dad as an adult is really special and nice. Also, there was a lot of family in this movie. Jake Weary, who’s in it, his mom, Kim [Zimmer], is the tow truck driver, and so it was just kind of amazing to have that time, I think, for all of us.”

Ewan pointed out that Esther McGregor also appeared in the film, to which Clara added, “Yeah, my little sister, Esther, came. That’s right. So it was genuinely such a great time. I also think acting with my dad, I got to really appreciate his acting and what he does on a different scale.” As with the last time Ewan spoke to me about working with Clara, he had nothing but praise for his daughter, saying:

“I’m pretty sure over your childhood you would come and visit now and again, but [y]ou didn’t grow up on film sets or anything like that. You’d visit now and again. So, I got to see you as a producer, I got to see you as an actor up close, and was incredibly proud of that side of your work — which, of course,
I’d seen everything that Clara had done, but was super impressed playing those scenes with her. But I also got to see her as a producer and as the sort of creator of this whole thing in the first place, and how she was with the crew and how she carried herself, and I was really proud and impressed by that side of you.
And then Clara got to see me working, which is just different in a whole day’s shoot, but over several weeks. We hadn’t seen those sides of each other, I suppose, really.”

Image via Michel Hennin Collection

Clara McGregor already has her eyes set on her next project with her producing partner, Vera Bulder, and it will bring the remarkable true story of Julie d’Aubigny to the silver screen at long last. d’Aubigny was a 17th-century French opera singer whose story sounds like one made for a big-budget Hollywood epic. She also happens to be a figure in history who myself and my co-host on Petticoats & Poppies have often lamented the lack of movies about, and you’ll see my excitement set in when you watch the full interview in the player above. McGregor seemed just as excited to discuss the woman, who she hailed as “a Joan of Arc kind of figure.”

“Our next project is something that we’ve actually been working on for a minute now, which is really exciting. It’s a project called
Goddess
.
We got the rights to this book, which is a true story about a woman who grew up in Versailles in France in the 17th Century and was a sword-fighting, bisexual, cross-dressing, opera singer who was pardoned by the king of France three times and lived on the run and broke her girlfriend out of a nunnery and burned it to the ground.
It’s this incredible story that my producing partner, Vera, she kind of dug it up online. There’s not a whole lot out there about her, and we managed to get the rights to a book that’s written by an amazing historian, who’s actually one of the few who spent time with that person researching her. So I think we love finding stories like that that are kind of, you know, hidden or deserve to be told and stuff. So that one’s something that we’re really excited about that we’re developing out of Europe right now.”

With Bleeding Love in the rearview mirror, the stage is set for McGregor and her collaborators to take the industry by storm with their creative vision for Goddess. As for Ewan, I attempted to eke out some information about his upcoming film with Anne Hathaway, but all he could say was there are apparently no dinosaurs in it. Catch McGregor and her father in Bleeding Love, which is in theaters and on-demand now. And stay tuned to Collider for updates on where both of their careers are headed next.

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