'Trainspotting': Where are Renton, Sick Boy and their friends now?
At the end of 1996's Trainspotting, heroin addict Mark Renton ditched his friends and walked away with the $20,000 take from their drug-deal score.
Twenty-one years later, Renton (played by Ewan McGregor) makes his return to Edinburgh, Scotland, and his mates in the beginning of T2 Trainspotting (in theaters Friday in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto; expands to additional cities through April 7).
While none of the major characters have died from their hard-living drug- and crime-filled lifestyle in the interim, each has paid the price for it.
"It makes perfect sense, where they are all at in life," McGregor says. "And the existential concerns they're feeling are very real to me. It's like, 'What are we doing with our lives?' "
Here's a rundown of where life has taken the characters since moviegoers last saw them:
MARK RENTON
The biggest character surprise is the revelation that junkie Renton has been heroin-free for 20 years, having moved to Amsterdam to escape the wrath of his spurned mates.
"Renton has replaced his heroin addiction with fitness addiction, which is much better for you," says McGregor, 45. "He's not doing too badly when we meet him, other than what's going on in his head."
Renton is aimless after a failed marriage and when he returns to Edinburgh, he decides to stay.
SICK BOY
Jonny Lee Miller, 44, dyed his hair blonde during a break from TV's Elementary to replay Simon (better known as Sick Boy), who still prefers the outdated bleached look.
Despite his obvious intelligence and charm, Sick Boy trades illegal cigarettes and runs low-level blackmail scams that involve shooting video of men with his prostitute girlfriend Veronika. Sick Boy's ticket out involves turning his rundown pub into a sex sauna.
"Of all the characters, Simon has the least hope," says director Danny Boyle. "He's the most cruel in a way, so maybe he deserves the least hope."
BEGBIE
The biggest no surprise in T2: Mentally unhinged thug Begbie — played by Robert Carlyle, 55 — is in prison. "He has knifed someone and he's denied parole in the beginning, which is the trigger for events," says Boyle.
Once sprung, Begbie wants revenge on Renton and to see his student son become a career criminal. His son prefers to study hotel management.
SPUD
Most depressing catch-up: Spud (Ewen Bremner, 45) blew the thousands that Renton secretly gifted him at the end of Trainspotting on smack and blamed Renton for the resulting spiral.
Spud most clearly depicts heroin's perils in T2, still very much in the drug's grip two decades later when he unsuccessfully attempts suicide.
"Before he digs out some hope, his life has been hopeless, which is the reality of so many heroin addicts," Boyle says.