Ewan McGregor has wielded a light saber, dived into a toilet, serenaded Nicole Kidman, and repeatedly gone full-frontal on the big screen. He also made the jump to reality TV in 2004. Fortunately, it wasn’t on Dancing with the Stars (although I might actually watch the show if he was a contestant). In A Long Way Round, Ewan and best friend Charley Boorman chronicled their 20,000-mile motorcycle trip from London to New York by way of Siberia.

Avid motorcyclist Ewan took a second trip with Charley starting May, 2007, in an 85-day ride from Scotland to South Africa that’s covered in Long Way Down.

Ewan told TV Guide that the idea for the second trip came from a charity visit he made to Malawi with UNICEF, saying “I’d been really touched by what I saw. I just thought, ‘God, I want to ride my bike down there!'”

Unlike the TV Guide article, I doubt UNICEF will use that particular quote on their promotional materials.

Ewan is actually a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and visited several UNICEF projects on the Africa trip, so he’s not as biker-dude shallow as that quote makes him sound. He is using Long Way Down to raise awareness not only of the beauty of Africa, but of the plight of the continent’s children.

“Educating children about landmines is so vital for children’s futures,” said Mr. McGregor. “With landmines and unexploded ordnance lying in homes, fields, rivers and schools in Ethiopia and other countries, I can really see how UNICEF’s Mine Risk Education is an essential life-saving intervention.”

[From the United Nations Web site]

Ewan is rarely in the tabloids, unlike good friend and former roommate Jude Law. He has been married to Eve Mavrakis, a French production designer, for 13 years. Although she doesn’t share his adrenaline enthusiasm, Eve did surprise Ewan by joining him on part of the journey.

I was absolutely thrilled. The first day she rode, she was really quite upset. It’s a whole new set of skills, isn’t it? But, instead of giving up and going, “Oh, well, I’ll drive a car,” she battled through. I was so proud.

[From TV Guide, print edition, September 1, 2008]

Ewan and Eva have three daughters, including one they adopted from Mongolia. Ewan is very protective of his family’s privacy.

One of Ewan’s favorite parts of the trip was the Ethiopian Highlands.

The landscape is staggeringly beautiful. Southern Ethiopia is very flat and barren but Northern Ethiopia is huge mountains. It’s absolutely stunning.

[From TV Guide, print edition, September 1, 2008]

Although he didn’t like being away from his kids for so long, and the kids didn’t like him being gone, Ewan told TV Guide there may be a third installment of his series. “It would be good to do South to North America. We’ve done A Long Way Round and Long Way Down. Now we have to do A Long Way Up!

Long Way Down airs Saturdays at 9 on Fox Reality Channel.

You can learn more about the show, and Ewan and Charley’s journey, on UN’s Long Way Down website, and the website for the show, Longwaydown.com.

All photos credit Longwaydown.com, BBC and Unicef.