Ewan McGregor waited two decades to fulfil his ambition of becoming a director, finally getting his chance in 2016 with American Pastoral, an adaptation of Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. He was originally cast only as an actor, but stepped into the director's chair after Phillip Noyce left the project shortly before filming began, encouraged by his then-wife, production designer Eve Mavrakis. The move mattered to McGregor personally, as he had long seen himself as a filmmaker as well as an actor, tracing the ambition back to comments he made in an interview shortly after Trainspotting.

McGregor described feeling immense pressure taking on the project, saying it was "a responsibility to Philip Roth, to the producer, to the cast, to everybody who had read that novel and liked that novel." The film starred McGregor alongside Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning, and he drew on rehearsal techniques learned from working with director Danny Boyle. Despite his long-held ambition, American Pastoral was met with a poor critical and commercial reception, and it remains McGregor's sole feature-directing credit to date.