Kelly Macdonald admits that her entry into the world of acting was “a fairy tale”. Just 19 at the time and working in a pub in Glasgow, Macdonald was toying with the idea of drama school when she was handed a leaflet for an open casting call for Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. She got the bus to audition – along with thousands of others – and the rest, as they say, is history.
“There was a rumour going around somewhere that it was nepotism because I was related to [the film’s producer] Andrew Macdonald, but I don’t think I am. Or if I am, then it’s from centuries ago and neither of us have any idea. It’s a very Scottish name!” says the actress, who is now 46.
“Playing Diane was an incredible first job. There was a real energy on set; we all huddled in a caravan, drinking tea between takes. I remember feeling a lot less experienced than everyone else because they’d acted before, or were at least professionally trained, but it was a lot of fun.”
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Macdonald never made it to drama school (“There’s still time!” she insists), but has gone on to star in some of the biggest productions of the past two decades, from Martin Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire to the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, the final Harry Potter movie (as Helena Ravenclaw) to Pixar’s Brave (voicing the lead, Merida), and of course her breathtaking turn as DCI Joanne Davidson in the BBC’s Line of Duty. When the finale aired during lockdown in May 2021, it pulled in the largest television audience for a drama in Britain since modern records began (12.8 million in total).
“Line of Duty was a strange one. People have told me the audience figures and I can’t get my head around them; I just can’t compute them at all,” admits Macdonald, who lives in Glasgow with her two sons, Freddie and Theodore (she shares custody with her ex-partner of 14 years, the Travis bassist Dougie Payne). “I was so used to flying vaguely under the radar and then suddenly I was famous. Everyone knew my name and everyone was talking about the show, but it was also during lockdown, so I was at home going through all of that by myself.
“I found it quite traumatising; there was a weird sort of stress involved. I think it’ll be a retrospective thing – I’ll look back one day and have an idea of what happened. But I’m not there yet.”
Low profile
Despite a number of accolades to her name – a Screen Actors Guild award for Boardwalk Empire, an Emmy for The Girl in the Café, a Critics Choice award for Gosford Park – Macdonald has often taken a back seat when it comes to fame and celebrity. You won’t find her at many red-carpet events, and certainly not parading in a fancy outfit at the Met Ball.
“I love my anonymity,” she says. “I have a very normal life off screen. I look after my two sons and spend most of my time loading and unloading the dishwasher, so I’m very uncomfortable with fame and being recognised. I understand it’s part of the job, but I try to stay away from it as much as possible. The role that really changed things for me was Boardwalk Empire. I’d been in a lot of things before then and people hadn’t really realised. People in the industry had, but not your normal day-to-day person on the street. But after Boardwalk it was different. I was living in New York and I remember a truck driver shouting, ‘Margaret!’ [her character’s name] at me out the window.
“In a sense, that’s one thing about the pandemic which I enjoyed: wearing a mask meant no one knew who I was. I have a friend in the industry who said he loved wearing a mask because it meant he could people-watch again.”
While Macdonald may shy away from fame, her career is going from strength to strength. In her latest film, the Second World War thriller Operation Mincemeat, she stars as an ambitious MI5 secretary alongside Colin Firth, Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen and Downton Abbey’s Penelope Wilton. “My character is such a smart, independent woman, I loved her from the moment I read the script. But I’ve wanted to work with [director] John Madden for so long I’d have made cups of tea if I didn’t get the role,” she admits.
She is also set to be the first guest on the English version of the French hit film- and TV-industry comedy Call My Agent! – where Macdonald admits to “fully taking the mickey” out of herself.
“I like comedy and I like funny people, so it’s the perfect job for me,” she says. “I got to work opposite Jim Broadbent and I could literally watch him eat his dinner, he’s amazing. It was actually Penelope [Wilton] who first got me into the original show during lockdown. It’s such a weirdly small world.
“She was also great to work alongside on Operation Mincemeat. We were all such good friends on set that John [Madden] would get annoyed at us. We’d be chatting away in the green room when he was calling us in, but we were too distracted to do as we were told. I also had some burning questions for Matthew about Succession that I needed answering. He was very gracious and explained this one plot point I didn’t understand.”
With two more films in post-production – the acclaimed Carol Morley’s Typist Artist Pirate King, alongside Monica Dolan and Gina McKee, and thriller I Came By, opposite up-and-coming star George MacKay (1917, True History of the Kelly Gang) and Hugh Bonneville – Macdonald will be appearing on screens aplenty over the coming months, which is worlds away from how she felt when she first joined the industry. “People would be talking about their next jobs and I’d be sat panicking in the corner with nothing lined up,” she admits.
And the one piece of advice the experienced actress she is now would have given herself when she started out? “I’d tell myself that something will always come up,” she says.
“You know, when I was younger and working in a restaurant, a palm reader came in, and we were all bored so we let her read ours. She told me that I’d start something in life, then stop again, then start again and stop. At the time I thought, ‘Oh god, what a depressing life, I can’t stick at anything,’ but now I think it relates to acting and the cycles of getting work and then things going quiet. Well, it does if you believe in all that.
“It’s nice to be at a stage in my career when I don’t worry about jobs,” she adds, “but I still hope the part or the characters I’m being offered are interesting and I can relate to them on the page. Although I would like to be invited to space. I haven’t done a sci-fi film yet, but I’ve played a lot of maids. They must have maids in space, right? Something has to keep everything clean.”
Operation Mincemeat is in cinemas now i