One popular film. Sometimes, that's all it takes to give a young actress instant recognition. For Scotland-native Kelly Macdonald, her cinematic profile was struck courtesy of director Danny Boyle's 1996 film Trainspotting, a trippy tale of pill-popping, beer-swilling, heroin-addicted, Edinburgh twentysomethings.
It's remarkable how one immediately thinks of her Trainspotting character, Diane, the moment the 23-year-old Macdonald sits down next to you. You envision Diane's punky wardrobe and club-hopping frenzy, all of which are worlds apart from Macdonald's own quiet-spoken demeanor. Her Scottish lilt is part of her charm. From a casting standpoint, it's also a liability. The catch is acquiring vocal flexibility.
"I think its a good thing for any actor to have an ear for accents," Macdonald says. "I have had one from an early age That was the first sign I was interested in acting. I would mimic accents that I heard on TV and film. I even went through a phase where I hadn't done a Scottish accent for such a long time."
There is a building sense of hype surrounding Macdonald, thanks to her work in a number of art-house films: My Life So Far, Loss of Sexual Innocence and Splendor. More importantly, each role has earned Macdonald additional, critical acclaim. Macdonald's latest film, writer/director Ray De Felitta's 1950s nostalgic romance, Two Family House, is not going to make the pixyish Scot a household name. Still, Two Family House does offer Macdonald a rare turn in the leading lady spotlight. It's her chance to show other moviemakers that she's capable of dramatically supporting an entire film, Hollywood or otherwise.
"There's no reason that British actors should stop working in the States or vice-versa," Macdonald says. "I don't think about where the work is, and I don't make a conscious effort to be in an American movie. Its just a matter where the work comes up."
In the film, Buddy Visalo (Michael Rispoli of TV's The Sopranos) is a down-on-his-luck factory worker with a simple dream. He wants to spend his life savings on a two-family house. Buddy plans to operate a tavern on the first floor, and live with his wife, Estelle (Katherine Narducci) in a second-floor apartment. The problem is that Estelle doesn't share his dreams. Actually, the bigger problem is with Mary O' Neary (Macdonald), a pregnant Irish woman who lives in the upper-floor apartment. Buddy feels compelled to help Mary after she's abandoned by her drunken husband. Before long, Buddy also falls in love with her.
It often takes a blockbuster movie like Titanic to make an unknown actress into a Hollywood celebrity. Macdonald's goals are a little more realistic. Still, as a child, she would read and re-read a book about the history of MGM. She felt sure that the movies were in her future.
"I used to tell my mom that one day I was going to visit Hollywood, and she said she believed me," Macdonald says. "I'm not an overly ambitious kind of person. I just knew I would see the Hollywood sign for real."
In an ideal world, the quality of a film would matter more than its box office. Of course, movies aren't made in an ideal world. Two Family House has more than its share of commercial challenges. For one thing, De Felitta's film is a romantic comedy, and comedies are often considered too sweet for art-house audiences. On one level, Two Family House might be considered a hip version of the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
"It's the kind of movies these days, as good as it is, that winds up having trouble getting a distributor," De Felitta says. "It's going to wind up being classy cable fare. It's hard to get movies like Two Family House put out."
Can an art-house film set out to tell a feel-good story? The fact that the core of De Felitta's story is based on a real-life incident experienced by his uncle boosts the film's credibility factor. At the Two Family House premiere, edgy Sundance Film Festival audiences were quickly won over by its humanist comedy. The believable chemistry between Macdonald and Rispoli was impossible to resist.
The cinematic trend is to have an American actor play an Irish character with a manufactured accent. But De Felitta was given the freedom to cast actors who he felt matched perfectly with the roles. Macdonald is Scottish, not Irish. Still, she was an immediate choice.
"Kelly was always popping up in a movie, and I'd say, 'There's that girl again,' " De Felitta says. "She's one of these actors who I love watching, and I had a feeling other directors felt that way, too. You'd see her in parts that aren't necessarily big, and suddenly there feels like there's more screen time being given to her. I would just look at those movies and say, 'I wish the movie that had more footage of her and less of all these other people in it.' "
Macdonald's performance as Mary is organic in the sense that she has no formal training. Free of any sense of melodrama, one might call it an underperformance.
"I'm learning as I go along," says Macdonald. "I think that's the best way to go, because drama school teaches you a lot that you have to forget once you actually start working.
"A few years ago I thought I was lacking in some great thing, because I didn't go to drama school. But I'm over that now."
If Two Family House would have been made 25 years ago, it would probably have been a studio film similar in spirit to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore or The Last Picture Show. Then, Macdonald would have had a serious shot at American stardom. As it stands now, she'll just have to work a little bit harder. ©
