Ewan McGregor is Jim Carrey’s Prison Bitch

While filming their new movie, I Love You Philip Morris, Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor spent a good deal of time in operational prisons. McGregor said he was surprised at how calm the inmates were but it still took a few days to get acclimated to the fact that they were surrounded by rapists and murderers.

On one of the first days of filming, McGregor was set at the end of a long corridor lined with extras, who were real life convicts. He was supposed to run down the hallway frantically but as he was standing on the opposite side from the camera and crew waiting for them to yell “Action,” he suddenly realized just how far away they were and how vulnerable he was standing there all alone.

“At that moment,” McGregor said after the film’s screening at Sundance, “a prisoner comes up to me and says, ‘I think there should be a scene where I fight Jim for you.’”

“Obviously I won,” Carrey piped up.

—Sasha Perl-Raver