Jude Law vs. Ewan McGregor
Battle of the Thinking Woman's U.K. Fantasy Fodder

We may not want to see even an ad for All The King's Men, much less sit through the full length of what critics are apparently united in loathing, but we will say this for it: at least now we know that, when Chris Rock made that extremely (at the time) accurate observation at the Oscars about Jude Law starring in every movie, Sean Penn felt compelled to defend (in the most humourless way possible) not just a fellow actor, but a co-star. So now it kind of looks more like a big-brotherly move on Penn's part, rather than just another opportunity for Penn to demonstrate, by his own example, how the rest of us should live, like, Sean, dude, maybe you should focus less on award-show one-liners that you feel disparage your friends and more on picking material people would rather watch than a neighbour's colonoscopy.

Anyway, Law himself may have taken Rock's convivial remark to heart: after stumping for his six (6) movies in the last four months of 2004, he went away for a while. Well, sure, he might not have intended his hiatus to be quite as long as it ended up, given that Men was supposed to have hit theatres a long time ago, but kept having to go back for more tinkering to make it the boring mess now being offered to paying customers. But still, Law has but three movies due in 2006 -- his first professional work since The Aviator. Well, unless you would class as "work" the time he spent cuckolding, reuniting with, dumping, and apparently toying with Sienna Miller. And, to be fair, from what we've seen of her, any amount of time one passed with her dippy ass would feel like hard labour.

However, a funny thing happened while Law was taking a little time off: as more and more time passed since his last Oscar-nominated role (in Cold Mountain), his berth as go-to thirtysomething actor of U.K. extraction fell out from under him. Without the benefit of near-inescapable ubiquity, it's become apparent that Law not only has peers, but that there is one actor to whom he has achieved near-parity: Ewan McGregor.

Back in his 2001 Fame Audit, we called McGregor "the Gwyneth Paltrow of 1996," based on the way Miramax flogged him to a defenseless public. Five and a half years later, let's call him "pre-Law" (hee): there's scarcely a leading lady on Law's CV who isn't one of McGregor's sloppy seconds. Law may have starred opposite Paltrow twice -- in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, but McGregor had her first, in Emma. Natalie Portman did Closer with Law after the first two Star Wars prequels with McGregor. Law co-starred with Rachel Weisz in Enemy At The Gates after McGregor did in The Scarlet And The Black. Law co-starred with Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain after McGregor did in Moulin Rouge!. Law will co-star with Cameron Diaz this year, in The Holiday, years after McGregor did in A Life Less Ordinary. Technically, Law beat McGregor to Naomi Watts -- Law's I Heart Huckabees hit theatres a year before McGregor's Stay -- but from what we've heard, it's possible that Stay sat in the can for a while and may have pre-dated Huckabees. Plus, either way, Watts went on to co-star opposite a gigantic ape in the gigantic dog known as King Kong; she's hardly a prize worth fighting over.

Maybe Law's McGregoresque career path is no accident: the two are friends, former roommates, and once ran a production company together; McGregor admirably navigated the route from star of British TV movies to America's favourite accented scamp, and it's possible he advised his mate on which starlets would be good bets as co-stars. However, there must be some ineffable quality McGregor possesses that Law doesn't; though he's also gone through periods of overexposure -- and starred in the generally terrible Star Wars prequels, for Christ's sake -- McGregor is still beloved by the public, while Law has yet to live down those four unfortunate months in 2004. If it were as simple as biting even more of McGregor's moves, Law could also go full frontal in his next ten films, produce a documentary TV series about his motorcycle trip around the world, and stay married to a non-actress for over a decade. But since that's probably too much to hope for, we'd simply recommend that he continue spreading out his projects, stick to being "off-again" from the irksome Sienna Miller, and never make a movie with Scarlett Johansson, co-star of McGregor's despised The Island.

And if Jude Law felt like being naked in front of the camera from time to time...you know. It wouldn't hurt.

Advantage: McGregor