Clara McGregor: Hollywood's Hottest Double Threat—Actress, Producer, and Ewan's Legendary Daughter

From Set Kid to Hollywood Power Player

Clara McGregor didn't just fall into showbiz—she was practically born on a movie set. But while most nepo babies crave the spotlight, she was secretly obsessing over the crew's headsets and the chaos behind the cameras. “As a kid, you just sit and observe,” she recalls. “I’d see everyone sitting by the monitors and wait to see if there was a little headset free and sneak in and get a view.” That quiet obsession turned into a full-blown career as both an actress and producer—a rare double threat that's making Hollywood sit up and take notice.

At 28, McGregor has already carved out a lane that's entirely her own. She's the co-founder of Deux Dames, a production company that's greenlighting bold, female-driven stories. Her debut feature as a writer-producer-star, Bleeding Love, premiered at SXSW and featured a very familiar face: her dad, Ewan McGregor. But don't call it nepotism—she used his star power like a savvy producer. “Casting my dad as my dad… made it way easier to get that to keep going, because we had an A-list actor on every page,” she says with a grin. “Other projects when I don’t hire my dad, those take longer.”

Growing Up McGregor: The Pressure to Perform

Growing up in the UK, the pressure to follow in Obi-Wan's footsteps wasn't as intense. “There was less of an assumption that I was going to become an actor,” she says. But when her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 13, everything shifted. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, you’re going to do what your dad did.’” She deflected with photography, then cinema studies at NYU, graduating in 2017. She stayed in New York, hustling on Backstage.com auditions and dabbling in modeling before landing her breakout role in American Horror Story.

Now, she's settled into the perfect industry sweet spot: acting in indie films and producing high-concept projects. “I want to be as busy as I can be,” she says. “People often ask me: ‘What’s your dream movie?’ …I’m like, ‘To be filming on set and know my next movie that I’m shooting again really soon after.’ That’s a dream.”

What's Next? A Sword-Fighting Opera Singer, a Thriller, and Comedy Gold

McGregor's producing slate is stacked. Deux Dames' next project is a biopic of Julie d'Aubigny—a 17th-century French opera star who was also a cross-dressing, bisexual, sword-fighting outlaw. “She would slay men in sword fights and have to live on the run and was pardoned by the King of France. Crazy life,” McGregor says, clearly thrilled. The film is fully funded and set to shoot in France this year. Will she star in it? “We will never get in the way of a project getting made… but there’s so many parts in this, and we’re both actresses, so whenever we can, we do.”

This spring, she heads to Cyprus to lead Noon, a dramatic thriller from French director Xavier Palud. But what she really craves is comedy. “I want to lighten it up a bit,” she admits. She's been studying the greats: Peter Sellers, Fleabag, Girls, and even The House Bunny. “Anna Faris is amazing in it. It has that raunchy humor that someone like Rachel Sennott has really nailed. It was allowing women to have the same kind of humor as men, because we do.”

Family Ties: Watching Sister Esther in 'Babygirl'

Even as a producer, she can't always turn off her analytical brain. But she's learning to lose herself in films—especially when her younger sister Esther appears alongside Nicole Kidman in Babygirl. “I’ve seen it four times now. [Esther is] so amazing. She’s so powerful in her moments; she’s totally unforgettable. And seeing her with Nicole was so special and sweet and full circle in a way.”

The Bottom Line: Clara McGregor Is Just Getting Started

Whether she's producing a queer historical epic, starring in a psychological thriller, or obsessing over comedy scripts, Clara McGregor is proving that being born into Hollywood doesn't mean you have to take the easy road. She's building an empire on her own terms—one puzzle piece at a time. As she puts it: “I want to be working every single day.” And with a slate like this, she's about to get her wish.

Photographs by Amber Asaly. Styling by Stephanie Sanchez.

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