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Joking with wolves
Karen McVeigh
(photo caption: Kevin McKidd tries to appear
in productions he'd not be embarrassed to watch with his friends
and family. )
Some movies, look like they were great
fun to make. Buddy movies. Heist movies. Anything with Cary Grant.
But the last thing that springs to mind when you are sitting
in the dark feeling scared and a bit sick, waiting for some unseen
thing to take yet another victim, is what a good laugh it all
must have been for the actors.
But for Kevin McKidd, best-known as Tommy
in Trainspotting, the making of Dog Soldiers - think visceral
Blair Witch Project meets Zulu in the Scottish Highlands - was
the "happiest and most creative" shoot he's ever been
on.
"We all set ourselves up for a fall,"
says the Elgin-born actor, "We had such a good time making
it that we all thought - oh man - the criticism would be bad.
We thought they'd be snobby about it, especially the broadsheets,
you know: 'This isn't what a British film should be doing, leave
it to the Americans. we should be doing kitchen-sink dramas,
stick to what they're good at' kind of thing."
But the film, about a platoon of squaddies
hunted down by 7ft werewolves, got rave reviews. Empire and Total
Film awarded it four stars and as for those broadsheets ... the
Observer said it was "among the most watchable British movie
of recent months". The Scotsman went one better, calling
it "the most entertaining British movie of the year".
At the London PR company where we meet,
McKidd has just discovered the movie's co-star, Sean Pertwee,
is in the building and goes off to greet him. I catch up with
him over a buffet lunch and remark that, having seen the film,
I'm in no mood to eat. In fact, I feel a bit shaky and sick -
it's quite gory. "Great!" he enthuses, "that's
good. Horror movies should make you feel like that."
The film is a change in direction for McKidd,
28, a veteran when it comes to playing life's losers. From his
film debut, as teenage gang leader Malky in Small Faces, to his
fitness fanatic addict in Trainspotting through to corrupt barrister
Billy Guthrie in Channel 4's North Square, he has had a run of
unheroic roles.
In Dog Soldiers he plays the lead, rifleman
Lawrence Cooper, a Boys Own action hero who defends his men to
the end.
McKidd, who had to endure gruelling combat
training to get himself into shape, broke a rib and a bone in
his hand after insisting on doing all his own stunts. It was
brilliant, he says.
"This guy is the action hero - which
is brilliant to do, but I wouldn't say it's my Keanu Reeves Speed
moment."
Playing heroes does make a difference,
he says, but not to him. "It probably would, to people in
the industry that I would consider to be shallow in their views,"
he says. "When I did Acid House, it's all about this character
that gets completely f***** over by his wife. He's looking after
the baby downstairs and just when you think he's about to get
out of it, he goes back for more - she says, let's get back together
and he says, OK. I remember a few people in the industry coming
up to me and saying, 'It doesn't show you in a good light, its
not a heroic part, you should be going for that now, this is
the next step for you. You need to be a hero.'
"I was, like, if I was doing it purely
for profile, I'd go and get a part in EastEnders or Casualty
or something."
The father-of-two, dressed in jeans and
a long-sleeved T-shirt, occasionally thumps the back of the couch,
not in anger, more in mild disgust, reserved most often for those
behind what he believes to be mediocre telly. Television is definitely
not his bag, I discover.
"Personally, and its purely personal,
not me trying to take the piss out of anybody, but if you're
interested in furthering your craft - whatever that means - you
should be doing theatre and film. I'd rather go and ride round
on a bike to pay my bills than do what I don't believe I should
be doing, purely for money."
McKidd, who was supplementing his income
by working as a London bicycle courier only three years ago,
has been busy since then. He has played the lead in Bedrooms
and Hallways, performed Gilbert and Sullivan in Mike Leigh's
Topsy Turvy, played Vronsky in Channel 4's Anna Karenina, and
the lead in North Square. Meanwhile, he and wife Jane have moved
out of London to the Bedfordshire countryside, to provide a bit
of space for their two children, Joseph, two and two-month-old
Iona.
When I ask whether, with Dog Soldiers,
he has left his couriering days far behind, he is disarmingly
honest, or humble, or perhaps both.
"The thing about this game is, if
you're talking about the likelihood of me getting work, I'm not
a bankable name. I'm just a working actor. I'm too cynical about
it to think that any film I make would make that big a difference.
I see myself as exactly the same as I saw myself when I was doing
mountain bike couriering. As far as being offered work, OK, it's
the lead guy and he's a bit cool, so there is that difference,
I suppose."
His own benchmark, McKidd says, is simple.
"It's not some high falutin' arty
thing, just something I'd want to go and see, a play or a film.
Most telly, I wouldn't want to see. There's an attitude. You
can see it, it's like 'Oh I don't really give a s*** about this
piece of telly but I'll do it anyway'. In this game, they dangle
a big carrot in front of you, saying, We'll give you three series
and this much money I've done it a couple of times and always
not liked myself because of it. Even although I've earned decent
money, I've thought, wait a minute I've just spent three or four
months doing this thing and if I sat down with my mates and my
wife in front of the telly I'd think it was a pile of pish, and
turn it over, so why am I doing it?
"I don't want to lie on my deathbed
and go, I'm now a great television actor. I mean, no offence,
but that's where my ambitions lie. Great film actor and great
theatre actor."
In Dog Soldiers, McKidd, Pertwee, and the
other actors were involved in the creative process. First-time
director, Neil Marshall, who also wrote the film, encouraged
them to come up with ideas. The resultant movie, says Marshall,
was "less gimmick-laden" and "more dramatic".
McKidd loves the technical aspect of movies - "the dynamic
of close-up" - and the collaboration and wants to explore
writing and directing, but not quite yet. "I've got ideas
in my head, but with two kids - Man, how do you get time to get
to the computer and write?"
He admires actors such as the Oscar- winner
Jim Broadbent, with whom he recently worked on a film of Nicholas
Nickelby, and US actor John Cusack, whom he met on a film about
an Second World War arts dealer, Max. In it, McKidd plays George
Gross, real-life founder of the Dada movement.
"Jim Broadbent's a great actor. He's
very unshowy about it all, that's what I like about him - just
comes in and does the job and does it really well, and is really
good at what he does.
And Cusack - again, he tries to pick interesting
stuff, not going down the obvious route, not going down the blockbuster
route. I admire folk that are trying to make their own way through
it instead of following the herd."
The son of a plumber and secretary, McKidd
wanted to be an actor ever since he took part in school plays
at "around six or seven." He dropped out of Edinburgh
University, where he was studying engineering, to take up a drama
course at Queen Margaret's College, and from there was picked
up by leading theatrical agency ICM.
Playing Tommy, Trainspotting's anti-drug
warning incarnate - somehow missed by those who criticised it
as a pro-drugs movie - turned McKidd's life around. At the age
of 21 he became an actor people recognised - with the huge hit
as his calling card.
It is time, I tell him, to nail the lie
about the ubiquitous poster - the one that mysteriously has four
blokes and a rather attractive woman on it, despite the fact
that Kelly MacDonald was in the film for about five minutes,
unlike him. McKidd has always muttered something about "being
in Tunisia with his girlfriend" at the time of the publicity
shoot as the reason he doesn't appear.
"Oh yeah," he laughs, "It's
totally cynical. I don't really know what happened. Originally
they wanted six people, but basically I think the PR people and
a few others decided it would be better to have a nice pretty
lassie's face on the front than my ugly mug. I could accept that."
He has vivid memories of standing at Waterloo
station with his girlfriend on a trip to London at the time and
her telling him to turn around "slowly" and look up
at an enormous billboard carrying the legendary film poster.
It must've hurt like hell at the time, but McKidd is pretty nonchalant
about it these days.
"You can't really regret things like
that," he says. "In the end, the important thing was,
I was in the film. People came up to me afterwards and said,
"Oh your character really spoke to me, I've been through
something like that myself. I mean, that's what's important really.
"Telling stories in an entertaining
way."
The Scotsman 16 May 2002
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