SCOTTISH actress and ex-Trainspotting star Kelly Macdonald talks about appearing in No Country For Old Men, convincing the Coen brothers and Tommy Lee Jones she could master a Texan accent and her future prospects…

Q. Your voice has a very different sound to a Texan accent, so how did you come to the role?
Kelly Macdonald: Well, the Coens were completely… I wouldn’t say affronted but they didn’t know why I was in the room with them at first. Ellen Chenoweth, the casting director who works with them, was kind of anti me going in to see them in the first place. I was in New York and my agent said it would be a good idea to go and see Ellen, but she was like: “No, no, no. I know Joel and Ethan and they were trying to cast as close to the area as possible, with the exception of the Chigurh character.”

So, as I’m really not that close geographically she took a bit of convincing. I jumped through a few hoops, went on tape for her and she said: “I think you should meet Joel and Ethan.” So I went and met Joel and Ethan but I don’t walk about with the accent if I’m working on it, so I was just chatting to them before I started reading and they were being friendly but I could see they were… they weren’t shrugging but I could sense it! But then I read the first scene and it all got a lot friendlier [laughs].

Q. It must be nice when someone who comes from the area [Tommy Lee Jones] then compliments you on your accent?
Kelly Macdonald: Yes. He was the third person really. It was Ellen and then Joel and Ethan, and then I had to get past Tommy. But he was great actually. I was genuinely worried about what he would think because he’s a Texas man and it would have been really hard to work with him knowing that he didn’t really think I was doing that great a job. But he was very vocal about it, which I was really grateful for.

Q. What’s it like to be directed by the Coens?
Kelly Macdonald: They’re really normal. It’s weird. If me and my brother had to work together [pauses] it wouldn’t be happy days. They’ve got an amazing amount of respect for each other and they’re both making the same film. There were never any decisions that had to be made one way or another. It was just easy. Before you actually start a film that’s going to be directed by two people you think, “well that’s going to be weird…” But after about five minutes you forget and you don’t even notice.

Q. When the brothers are writing, producing and directing how flexible are the Coens with their script? How spontaneous can you be?
Kelly Macdonald: You’re not tied in to it but there’s really no need to go anywhere else. There’s no moment on set where you think: “Well, this dialogue isn’t really working.” Or the set’s different to how I imagined it, so you have to really struggle to find your feet. It just doesn’t crop up. They work really hard on the script long before you get there, and then once they’ve cast the right people and they bring in their own crew, you kind of just turn up for work and do what you’re paid for. It’s lovely.

Q. Did you do much research into your character’s back story?
Kelly Macdonald: In the book you get a little bit more of how her and Llewellyn [Moss] met. But I don’t think it’s important and I’m not as hard working as Javier [Bardem]. I usually just kind of do what it says. I’m so busy usually worrying about what’s on the page in front of me to worry about what happened when the character was five [laughs].

Q. What does the future hold for you? Are we going to see you making a more permanent move to America?
Kelly Macdonald: Oh no. I did the Coen brothers film and then the next three things I did were in the States but it wasn’t a deliberate choice. I don’t think there’s that much happening here at the minute and I’m just lucky that I’ve been getting offers from overseas.

Q. Are you going to be taking a break now?
Kelly Macdonald: I’m really just going to play it by ear. I don’t really take breaks, it kind of just happens anyway. If something good came up it would be really hard to say “no”. But the good thing about being in the cast rather than the crew is that you’re not normally on the film for the duration. That happens very rarely, so a couple of weeks on something good would be fine at any time.

b>Read our review of No Country For Old Men

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