Ewan McGregor avoided The Shining for years because he was so scared of it

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Audiences will soon be heading back to the Overlook Hotel with DOCTOR SLEEP, an adaptation of Stephen King's sequel to "The Shining" which has been directed by Mike Flanagan. The film centers on a now-adult Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) as he confronts his torturous past and attempts to save a young woman from the clutches of a supernatural cult.

As we've seen from the trailers, DOCTOR SLEEP makes plenty of connections to Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING, which is easily one of my favourite films, but while appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Ewan McGregor admitted that it took him years to watch THE SHINING. It wasn't until McGregor was in drama school when he realized that he had avoided watching THE SHINING for so long because he was so scared of it. "It had the reputation of being the most terrifying film ever made," McGregor said. As for what gave McGregor his aversion to horror in the first place, the actor placed the blame on an event which occured during his childhood when he was touring with the school pipe band in Den Bosch in Holland

The guy that set it up owned this cinema complex, and one night, it was probably just to give the teachers a break to go have a few pints, they screened a movie for us all, kids, children. So they put us in this little screening room in the cinema complex and they switched the lights off, and it was Halloween. I Shatnered myself. You're amongst other kids, your peers, there were also kids who were a bit older than us and you didn't want to look like an idiot. Inside I was like, 'something's bad happened to me.'

To make things worse, McGregor said that "when we walked out, the corridor light was broken, it was dark, the switch wouldn't go on, and the projectionist had hung up a blanket all wet in the corridor, so as we walked down it, it hit us in the face and made us jump out of our skin. So I thought, 'I'm never watching a horror movie again in my life.'" Thankfully, when McGregor did finally watch THE SHINING, he quite enjoyed it.

The official synopsis for DOCTOR SLEEP:

Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality. Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before — at once facing his fears and reawakening ghosts of the past.

DOCTOR SLEEP will hit theaters on November 8, 2019, and you can check out a review from our own Paul Shirey right here!