The 1960s Social & Political Turmoil of 'American Pastoral' Comes to the Big Screen
Ewan McGregor directs and stars in the adaptation of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winner.
Since its release back in 1997, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral has widely been considered to not just be one of the acclaimed author’s greatest works, but one of the greatest American novels of all-time — it didn’t take home the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for nothing. Now, nearly two decades later, Roth’s depiction of the social and political turmoil of the ’60s is getting the Hollywood treatment as Paramount and Lionsgate bring it to the big screen. Marking the directorial debut of Ewan McGregor, American Pastoral also sees the 45-year-old Scot in the starring role of Seymour “Swede” Levov, “a former high school star athlete and a successful Jewish American businessman” whose upper middle class life goes down in flames during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency.
Also starring Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning (not to mention David Strathairn as Roth’s oft used alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman), the result of McGregor’s first stint in the director’s chair is set to hit theaters October 21.
