kelly mcdonald

Kelly Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom, on February 23, 1976. She was working as a waitress in 1996 when she came across a casting call brochure for a film called Trainspotting . It was a time when she didn’t really know what to do with her life, whether to study art at the university like her friends or what. But going to that acting test and being selected changed her life forever. “As soon as she sat down, terrible cliché but true, I told the location assistant she was feeling next to me: It’s her,” recounted director Danny Boyle , adding, “Kelly has that thing that Ewan [McGregor] has too. ]: an indefinable star quality, even if they are ordinary people. There’s something about them that she connects with people.Tom Hanks has it. James Stewart had it.”

The adaptation of Irvine Welsh ‘s novel , a stark and psychedelic look at the scourges of drugs, made history. And Macdonald, who took the role of an addicted teenager opposite the then also unknown Ewan McGregor , managed to attract attention. A solid career had just begun for this petite woman with wavy brown hair, who knows how to combine a certain sweetness with her strength of character in her characters.

Step by step, without destroying, but without ceasing to stand out, Macdonald worked in his country in 1998 with Cousin Bette , a somewhat tiresome adaptation of Honoré de Balzac , and Elizabeth , the irregular look at Elizabeth of England by the Indian Shekhar Kapur . These two period films were followed by small works of little interest, Entropy and Farewell to Sexual Innocence , from 1999.

It would take the new millennium for Macdonald to fall back into the orbit of a heavyweight filmmaker. And that was Robert Altman , who directed it in the Gosford Park choir (2001), a look at the upper and modest layers of English society, gathered in the house of the title. He had previously attracted attention in the independent Two Family House (2000).

Macdonald has been lucky enough to be in several movies and television series where the success of his perfect cast stands out, all the actors are very well chosen, which gives rise to a rare balance where some help each other. It happened in Gosford Park , but also in No Country for Old Men ( Joel Coen and Ethan Coen , 2007), based on the play by Cormac McCarthy , and in the Wizarding of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2) (2011) , as well as in the series The Shadow of Power (2003) , political and media intrigue, and Boardwalk Empire(2010), a look at the gangster world of Atlantic City and surroundings. His role in this latest series produced by Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg has allowed him to develop a complex and mysterious character, who gradually becomes known over three seasons.

Macdonald hasn’t minded being in small independent films like Intermission (2003), a wild Irish crime film with Colin Farrell , or the weird Asphyxia (2008), which adapts a novel by Chuck Palahniuk , also weird . This without being disgusted by commercial films such as the family The Magic Nanny (2006) or the foray into the life of the author of “Peter Pan” Discovering Neverland (2004).

Macdonald hasn’t fared badly, though a count of the roles she didn’t land would include Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love , Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix , Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge and Natalie Portman in The phantom menace . The truth is that it is difficult to imagine her in those roles… Without a doubt, her career has taken other, more appropriate paths, which, although they have not made her an undisputed star, have put her in a magnificent position, no one can doubt what a great actress she is. What is it.

It is worth highlighting the work of the actress in Knight and Assassin (2008), Michael Keaton ‘s directorial debut , a surprising Christmas story where she is a sweet woman, a beneficial influence on three men: her abusive husband, a professional assassin and a police inspector. Bertrand Tavernier directed her in At the Center of the Storm (2010), a film with Tommy Lee Jones as a tired cop, in which she promises more than she delivers. She has tried her luck in 2012 in animation giving life to the protagonist of Brave (Indomitable) , a Pixar production. She is also part of the great ensemble cast of Anna Karenina , an adaptation of the immortal novel byLeo Tolstoy .

In 2003 she married Dougie Payne, bassist of the Scottish rock group Travis, with whom she has a son and is expecting another as I write these lines. The whole family lives in Kelly’s native Glasgow, although, work obliges, tours and filming mean inevitable moves.