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Ewan McGregor's four kids with ex-wife Eve: From feud with Mary Elizabeth Winstead to adoption stories

The Star Wars actor also shares son Laurie with his second wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Ewan McGregor with his wife, ex-wife and children
Nichola Murphy
Deputy Lifestyle Editor
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Ewan McGregor is a doting father to five children – four with his ex-wife Eve Mavrakis and one with his second wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The Star Wars actor was married to French-Greek production designer Eve from 1995 until 2017, and they share daughters Clara and Esther and adopted daughters Jamyan and Anouk. After 22 years of marriage, the former couple surprised fans by announcing their separation in 2017 after photos emerged of him kissing his Fargo co-star Mary.

ewan mcgregor mary elizabeth winstead kissing© Getty Images
Ewan and Mary Elizabeth got married in 2022

Speaking about his divorce, which was finalised in 2020, he told GQ it was like "a bomb going off in everyone's life – my children's lives. The sort of healing of that is ongoing."

He went on to welcome a son called Laurie with Mary, whom he married in April 2022. Here's everything you need to know about Ewan's blended family…

Clara

ewan mcgregor mary elizabeth winstead clara mcgregor jamyan mcgregor a gentleman in moscow premiere© Getty
Clara and Jamyan joined their father at the premiere for A Gentleman In Moscow

Ewan and Eve welcomed their eldest child Clara in February 1996, the year after their wedding. The model, who has worked with Bluebella, also starred in Bleeding Love alongside her father.

Heaping praise on his daughter's achievement, Ewan said in an interview with Movieweb: "I think we were there for each other every step of the way. I was so proud of Clara for having achieved this very difficult task of getting a movie made. We were on set there because Clara dreamed up the story, had it written, produced it, and found a crew. I was so proud of her. If anything, there was just encouragement all the time, you know, 'Go for it!'"

The 2023 film, which follows a father and his estranged daughter, was "very loosely inspired off of our relationship," Clara explained.

"I've taken certain emotional concepts and the concept of addiction and family bonding and some of the issues that my dad and I dealt with and I put it on to these other characters in a different world in different situations," she continued.

"The conflicts that come up in a family and mending those conflicts, especially with a father and daughter. That was inspired off of my father and I finding each other again in moments and how we lost each other in moments."

Family conflict

The conflict Clara may be alluding to is her father's relationship with Mary. Clara insisted she is "very close" to her father, despite the fact that she once called her stepmother Mary "a piece of trash" on Instagram after pictures emerged of the couple kissing months after Ewan and Eve's secret split.

Backtracking on her comments, she later told The Times: "It wasn't my finest moment. I love him and I always will." 

Clara continued: "We are incredibly close and despite me strongly disagreeing with how he's gone about things, I'll always love him, and I hope he's happy, you know?" 

Esther

Eve Mavrakis in a black dress with her daughter Esther in a white dress© Kevin Winter
Esther (right) is a model, actress and tattoo artist

Ewan's second daughter Esther was born in November 2001, and she has also followed in her father's footsteps and dabbled in acting. 

After appearing in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi as Tetha Grig, Ewan praised his daughter's acting talent, stating on The Late Late Show with James Corden: "I'm sure everybody thinks she got the job because of me, but really she didn't. She auditioned for the role."

On the subject of working with his daughter, he sweetly added: "You don't really know with your kids until that moment when I was acting with her and it felt really normal and natural."

Aside from acting, model Esther has also featured in a campaign for Fendi, is a singer in the band French Thyme, and has tried her hand as a tattoo artist. Opening up about the latter, she told Washington Square News in 2021 that her biggest challenge is: "Not being taken seriously. I’ve been shut down multiple times and talked to quite rudely. A lot of tattoo artists are older, so I am often seen as a child. I’m 19, but I practice every day."

Jamyan

Ewan McGregor holding hands with his daughter Jamyan© Gregg DeGuire
The actor adopted Jamyan aged four

Ewan and Eve pursued adoption after the actor met Jamyan at a Unicef children's shelter during a bike ride – captured in TV series The Long Way Round – in Mongolia in 2004. Two years later, in April 2006, they adopted the then four-year-old, with Ewan explaining he couldn't get the little girl off his mind.

"[I] left that day, but I couldn't stop thinking about that little girl," he said. "It took nearly two years, but eventually we adopted Jamyan."

Anouk

Born in February 2011, Anouk is Ewan's youngest daughter and perhaps the most private of his five children. Ewan and Eve adopted her when she was around 4 months old.

In a sweeping statement about his family, the Scottish actor said in his Emmy award acceptance speech in 2021: "I have four daughters – the importance of women and women's rights and equality for women and equal pay – it's so great to be in a room where people are talking about that. I always think about my girls."

Ewan's family life with Eve

Ewan previously opened up about his marriage and family life with his first wife, whom he met while filming TV drama Kavanagh QC.

"I get asked what’s the secret to a happy marriage a lot, and there’s no answer to it without trivialising it. You can’t just say, 'If you do this or do that, you’ll have a great marriage' because it doesn’t work like that. There’s no secret other than to be in love with the woman you’re sharing your life with," he told The Telegraph

Speaking about his time away from home, he added: "It’s just the way it is. It’s how I make my living, and it’s how I support my family. And we just get on with it."

However, Ewan said he tried to be an involved father while raising his four daughters with his ex-wife, emphasising the importance of spending as much time with his kids as his acting schedule allowed. He even told the New York Post: "Sometimes we uproot them and put them in another school."

Laurie

ewan mcgregor son being held by daughter esther© Instagram
Clara announced the birth of Ewan and Mary's son Laurie

One year after his divorce from Eve was finalised, Ewan welcomed his youngest child and first son, Laurie, with Mary.

His eldest daughter Clara was the one to break the news about her step-brother's birth after Ewan and Mary kept their pregnancy secret. Alongside two sweet photos of Laurie, she wrote on social media: "Welcome to the world little brother. Congratulations to my Dad & Mary - this is the greatest gift."

Two years on, Mary has revealed their son is "obsessed" with Grogu, or Baby Yoda. "Once he was ready to be out in the world, that was one of the first places he ever went to, the Obi-Wan set. So, he has definitely become familiar with the Star Wars world, even if he doesn't fully understand it yet," she told EW

ewan mcgregor mary elizabeth winstead a gentleman in moscow premiere© Getty Images
The couple starred together in A Gentleman In Moscow

"In terms of our son's favorite toys, he's got his Grogu. He's got Lola from the Obi-Wan series. There's a lot of Dadas around from various different eras of Obi-Wan. If he sees any sort of Obi-Wan figure around, that's Dada. That's what he knows it as right now."

However, Ewan joked that he wasn't as excited to meet the real-life character while visiting his mother on the set of Ahsoka. "He freaked out," he told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, adding the tot "screamed the whole time."

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