oops, and all the time I had the first name of jonathan wrong.
yes, jonathan was born in dublin, but grew up and still lives in county cork. That is why he got the role of the murderer of Michael Collins, he was murdered in the county cork (had to peek at imdb to be sure).

Thanks for all the info. Now the movie makes more sense to me with your explanation about the stone and all. the actors are great , they all seem to be very vulnerable- Brian, curt, and arthur, that is the charm of the movie. And I think I remember that question I wanted to ask: Brian Slade turned into Tommy Stone
but in the interview he looked more like Brian's manager, but when singing he looks more like Brian Slade. Is that right? The manager is the decoy of Brian Slade/tommy stone?

about the accent and acting thing - ok, I would squirm too if a German would pretend speaking Swiss-German, that would be a very desaster. I somehow didn't put accent and acting together.

very interesting info about the production - he was supposed to only moon? Well, I guess, the production people just had their mouth open when Ewan did his more than mooning stuff, lol. What about the audience? They surely had not to act being crazy.. :D

I read somewhere, about questions nobody dares to ask the actors in the interview and one of them would be a question to Ewan mcgregor, how was it like to kiss Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Now after seeing Velvet Goldmine my question would rather be how was it like to kiss Jonathan Rhys-Myers?