Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald, best-known for her roles in Trainspotting and Brave, heads to WA to take on role in film adaption of Tim Winton’s Dirt Music

Despite hailing from Scotland, the lead of the film adaption of Tim Winton’s classic novel Dirt Music says tuning into Australian soaps as a child helped her master our distinctive drawl. Finding fame in the 1996 black comedy Trainspotting, Kelly Macdonald has since starred in a host of film and television projects around the world — and has become well known for her ability to master accents. From offering her native tongue to the voice of Disney princess Merida in Brave to taking a leading role in the American period crime series Boardwalk Empire, the Glasgow-born actor’s latest role is a world away from any of her previous projects. Speaking exclusively to The West Australian during a set visit in Esperance, Macdonald said she jumped at the chance to travel across the world and take on the distinctive Australian twang. “I have struggled with different accents before but I have watched a lot of Australian soaps in my life and I think that stood me in quite good stead, so it wasn’t all wasted hours of my youth,” she said. The actress stars as Georgie, who lives in a small and remote West Australian crayfishing village but finds herself stuck in an unhappy and strained marriage with Jim (David Wenham). When she meets town outcast Luther (American actor and Friday Night Lights star Garrett Hedlund), the two embark on a passionate affair which eventually blows up and sees her new beau flee into the harsh and dangerous wilderness. Like Winton’s novel — which was a nominee for the Man Booker prize and won the Miles Franklin Award in 2002 — the film’s setting plays just as big a role as the story on screen. Filmed in 2018, it features locations at Cape Leveque, Perth and the Esperance-Goldfields region. While she had never travelled to WA before, Macdonald said the film enabled her to see parts of the State most locals never experience. “I’ve been all over WA and it’s been just life-changing, visiting all these really remote places ... like we were way up in the Kimberley and on land that very few Australians actually get to visit or want to visit,” she said. “WA is massive, we fly around the place. In Scotland you can pretty much drive a couple of hours in each direction and you’re done, it’s not the case (in Australia).” The mother of two was visited by her children during filming and the family explored Rottnest. While they were determined to snap their own quokka selfie, one of her kids got a bit too excited by the furry critters. “I saw the sign that said ‘do not pick up the quokkas or feed them’ and then I turned around and my five-year-old was holding one of them. So they ticked that off the list because I was telling them all the great things about Australia and that was the thing they most wanted to do,” she said. While the uniquely Australian tale may be led by two foreigners, Dirt Music was directed by Aussie Gregor Jordan, who released a hugely successful trio of films in the early 2000s — Two Hands, Buffalo Soldiers and Ned Kelly — two of which starred Perth’s Heath Ledger. It also features musician Julia Stone from brother-sister duo Angus and Julia, who also played a role in the film’s soundtrack. Although the trailer for the film was released yesterday, the current closure of cinemas across the country means it is unclear when it will hit our screens. With many films being released on digital platforms due to the cinema shutdown, Jordan said the lack of international films being rolled out could actually be a blessing in disguise for the Australian screen industry. “The whole idea of a theatrical release for any movie is abstract, but I guess because Australia has done so well (in containing COVID-19), the prediction is that cinemas will open soon, and you need to have something on,” he said. “It’s a whole discussion in itself as to where the future of cinema lies and how streaming will affect it ... but it’s showing how this pandemic has changed the landscape of cinema. If it means more Australian movies get national releases that might be a silver lining to the situation.”