A few days after women (and their male allies) flooded the streets of Washington, D.C., and elsewhere to protest the Trump administration and advocate for their rights, Ewan McGregor has, rather unexpectedly, become the center of a politically charged Women’s March debate. After very publicly scorning a TV appearance with Piers Morgan because of the TV host’s “comments about #WomensMarch,” McGregor has been both lauded as a feminist and, in a blistering essay by Morgan in the Daily Mail, lambasted as “a pedophile-loving hypocrite.” Not bad work for someone who in 2010 claimed he wasn’t all that interested in politics. But while McGregor’s political activism may be new, his support of women isn’t. If you’ve been paying attention, McGregor’s earnest feminism has always been on display.

The words “Ewan McGregor” and “feminist” first made headlines in earnest back in 2009 when he jokingly told late-night host Craig Ferguson that the reason he was so often naked in films in the 90s and early aughts was because he was trying to even the objectification score. “Women are always expected to be naked in films, but I like to try and do it so they are not naked—have the women not be naked.” With a wide grin firmly in place he added, “It’s a feminist thing that I do.” McGregor’s fellow Scotsman Ferguson teases him, but it’s all on tape: in McGregor’s early filmology, he is time and time again the object of the camera’s lusty gaze.

And in 2012, when explaining why he doesn’t do many sex scenes at all anymore, McGregor told Graham Norton that they make him uncomfortable for a very specific reason. “I’m 40 now and the actresses keep getting younger and younger. . .and I worry that it’ll look like I’m taking advantage.” McGregor’s deceptively boyish charm and off-the-radar home life means that most of his fans might not realize that his oldest daughter, Clara, is 20 years-old—the same age as many actresses who could be cast opposite McGregor.

In fact, the now 45-year-old actor has spent 22 years of his life in the close company of women. He met his wife, French production designer Éve Mavrakis, in 1995 before his breakout role on Trainspotting. (Even his laddish, hot-young-breakout-star interview with Vanity Fair in 1998 featured the actor grappling with his tiny daughter and a wife who “forgot to pay” the phone bill. McGregor has been a husband and dad for as long as he’s been a celebrity.) Defying Hollywood tradition, McGregor and Mavrakis are still married and the couple has four daughters together—one adopted from Mongolia—a fact that McGregor proudly wears on his sleeve. Well, at least his arm. He has a massive tattoo with the names of the five women in his life covering his upper arm and shoulder.

Speaking with The Times in 2011, McGregor said that despite his well-documented love of “manly” arts like motorcycle riding and football, he’s much more at home in female company:

There’s nothing I like more when I’m not working than when Ève is having lunch with her girlfriends and I go along. When you see women in a restaurant having lunch, they’re so into each other, you know? There’s a real connection like nothing else is going on, and it’s wonderful. Whereas men are too busy showing each other how big their d***s are. I’m always much happier with women in social situations. Hanging out with men seems to encourage that kind of macho thing of putting each other down. I don’t like it and I’m not very good at it.

(Piers Morgan might disagree with that last part.)

McGregor’s affection for his daughters might be at the source of his scorn for Morgan. They all marched—alongside millions of other women—last Saturday.

But McGregor’s advocacy for women has long extended outside of his own family circle. As a champion for Unicef since 2004, the actor has been shining a light on underserved mothers and girls around the globe for well over a decade. These days, his Instagram account (once primarily a home for motorcycle and nature photography) is flooded with photos promoting this cause.

And McGregor—always a champion for others—is an active advocate for his female co-stars and women behind the camera. In a 2016 interview promoting the John Le Carré adaptation Our Kind of Traitor, McGregor pointed out the depth of the female lead character (played by newly minted Oscar nominee Naomie Harris). Too often, he lamented, women in thrillers are merely “wives or girlfriends.” Giving due credit to the film’s directer, Susannah White, he said: “We have a woman directing the film. There’s a better perspective.”

So, no, it should come as no surprise that McGregor has taken such a public stance this week in support of women. As he sheepishly told Vanity Fair in 1998, “I have a very high horse and I’ll jump on it a lot. I know that about myself. I fire off on both barrels sometimes when maybe I should just fire off on one.” Lately that tendency has taken on a more political bent. McGregor has called directing the protest-heavy film American Pastoral a “life-changing experience.” The public’s first inkling of that change may have come when McGregor sent off an incendiary tweet at British politician Boris Johnson last June:

After decades of supporting women and speaking his mind, Ewan McGregor has dialed the intensity up to 11. In other words, he may only just be getting started.