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New McKidd on the block
TV: Kevin McKidd is being called the new Colin Firth, not that he's very happy about it, says John Lyttle

Kevin McKidd has yet to see his sex scenes as Vronsky in Channel 4's controversial new production of Anna Karenina. So I'm helping the actor picture himself and co-star Helen McCrory in flagrante delicto: "I believe there's a shot of her feet bobbing around your shoulders. I can't remember if that's before or after the sequence featuring your naked bottom. But I do recall amplified panting on the soundtrack which suggests asthmatic elephants in heat. A big herd of them."

I'm exaggerating. Though not much. McKidd takes a swig of freshly squeezed orange juice like he wishes it were 15 per cent proof. "Well, we did want the sex to be different. Helen and I discussed that with the director, David Blair. The costume drama sex scene has become such a cliché. We were determined not to be... I'm not sure. Tasteful?" I nod. Wait. McKidd finally crumbles: "What are people saying?" I tell him that people are saying he's the new Colin Firth. The moan is immediate: "Oh God. Look at me. I was out of work for six months last year. I worked as a bicycle courier. Hell, I had my agent beg me a role on an American mini-series called Leprechauns. There was rent to pay... Do I resemble Colin Firth in any way?" Actually, no. Firth is an impeccably smooth and English presence; McKidd is rougher-grained. If Firth had played Vronsky he'd have been a dreamboat. McKidd makes him a compelling bastard who betrays himself in the very moment he betrays his beloved. One is RADA, the other is... radar.

His gang leader in the 1996 movie Small Faces was a complex monster, too. Likewise his Tommy in Trainspotting had an innocence which grated. And could his nominal gay hero in Bedrooms And Hallways have been more smackable? Even trilling Gilbert and Sullivan ditties in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, McKidd happily flaunted the full snobbery of the petulant male ingenue.

"It's not my job to be loved," he scoffs. "Or to be beautiful. That's something else Blair insisted onGetting away from the idea that literary adaptation dramas have to be populated exclusively by the gorgeous. It's patronising to the audience. Viewers will just switch off because they think, 'Wait a minute, I'm a normal person and I feel things deeply, so why do they have to be stunning on screen before they're allowed to be passionate?'" It's very now: moribund costume drama's next necessary stage.

Or maybe's it's a Scottish thing: a plain-speaking manner to match the rising star's pale skin and red hair. McKidd was raised on a council estate in Leith. Like a lot of working-class boys he had parents who wanted him to do well without getting his heart broken. "They were supportive but, of course, they wanted me to have something else I could make a living at." The fall-back was engineering. It didn't pan out. McKidd dropped his college degree and went where the acting bug took him.

Which was London, eventually. As luck would have it, McKidd was part of an exodus to the Big Smoke Resurgent Celtic pride found its breakout generation in Ewan McGregor, Irvine Welsh, Rab C Nesbitt and gung-ho epics such as Braveheart. "There was a bunch of us determined to come down here and succeed," McKidd says. Though he's a mere 26 he makes the move sound a century ago. "We weren't frightened. It was more: 'What is this London media crap?' It's not as if we knew what was happening - it just happened."

McKidd still touches base with the gang. "It's easy to become insular," he says. "Actors get together and talk nothing but shop." But doesn't he want to talk shop now his career is shifting into high gear? This modern and relevant Anna Karenina may confound purists who like their classic novels semi-comatose, but the production will undoubtedly raise his profile. "Really? Now that I'm the new Colin Firth? I'm not falling for that build-up. There are far more important things." Name one. "Easy. I'll be a father in a few weeks' time. Mind you, a rave review is never anything to be casual about."

Daily Express 6 May 2000

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