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Film: Ahead of the pack
Trainspotting didn't do it. But, reckons Wendy Ide, co-starring with a werewolf will bring Kevin McKidd the recognition he deserves

It's a bright, chilly day in Bloomsbury and the seasons have blurred enigmatically between winter and spring. Until yesterday Kevin McKidd was shooting a short film in the north of England. Within a week or so he'll be summoned to the set of his next movie, an adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby written and directed by Douglas McGrath, the American film-maker behind the successful cinema version of Jane Austen's Emma. Downstairs, in this immaculate Georgian townhouse, a photographer is trying (rather optimistically) to create a Blair Witch-type atmosphere with some twigs and leaves in a large, airy reception room. The photographer is from one of the film maga zines currently vying to outdo each other with superlatives to describe McKidd's hugely acclaimed latest film, Dog Soldiers. Yes, Kevin McKidd is in demand.

It must be particularly sweet for the unassuming Scottish actor -- a vindication of his notorious decision to hit the beach rather than the billboards. (He took his girlfriend on holiday after completing Train spotting, and as a result lost the chance to appear as #6 on that iconic poster.) Until a couple of years ago, it was impossible to read an article on him that didn't lament the neglected opportunity. While his co-stars were on a fast-track to the A-list, it was suggested, McKidd had missed out a vital boost to his career and was destined to be an also-ran in the great ego race.

For a while, McKidd did seem to be rather stuck in a rut, his fair skin lending itself all too easily to druggy pallor in a string of roles as junkies and deadbeats. But, like his fellow low-profile Trainspotter Shirley Henderson, he kept cropping up, turning in consistently excellent performances and proving himself as an exceptionally versatile actor, equally at home in costume or contemporary drama, comedy or, in the case of his latest picture, a werewolf action thriller.

His looks don't hurt -- strong, almost brutal features and a frosting of blond hair that look unarguably Scottish, but are no less convincing as Russian nobility or yuppie lawyer; equally effective on big screen, small screen, or the West End stage -- where he was appearing in a show directed by Stephen Daldry when the script of Dog Soldiers arrived at the stage door.

'I thought about it: is this a good idea? It's a werewolf movie; I've just been doing this really worthy play; people might look down their noses. Then I thought: No, f*** it actually, I've always wanted to do that kind of thing.'

McKidd admits that, having taken little interest in sport during his formative years, horror movies were a key part of his adolescence. 'Evil Dead and things like that, they're kind of rites-of-passage films for a lot of teenage boys,' he says. 'If you weren't into football, I think you bonded with your male friends through things like that. Gory films or Spinal Tap.'

So McKidd signed up for a gleefully violent, darkly funny werewolf movie set in the forests of Scotland. But in a cruel twist of fate for this most vocally homesick of London-based Scottish actors, he was cheated out of six weeks barging through the undergrowth of his home country by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth.

'It was just too difficult logistically. But,' he adds, with a glimmer of nationalist fervour, 'I did a film straight after that, in the outer Hebrides, so I was up there for three months. It was summer and it was just beautiful. The beaches are just so white -- it's like nowhere else on earth.' For Dog Soldiers, meanwhile, he had to make do with rural Luxembourg doubling for the Scottish countryside.

Dog Soldiers is the debut film from Neil Marshall, a director with an agenda to bring quality horror back to the UK. And his first picture is a giant step in the right direction. McKidd stars as Rifleman Lawrence Cooper, part of a squad of British soldiers on a routine exercise in the wilds of Scotland. Somewhere out in the woods, there's a group of Special Operations Division soldiers, who -- led by Cooper's mortal enemy Captain Richard Ryan (Liam Cunningham) -- are tracking the squad's progress through the forest. But unknown to everyone, another, far more deadly foe is on their trail. When Cooper's sergeant (Sean Pertwee) is wounded, he's forced to take control and prepare the men for the battle of their lives. What follows is a hilarious, horrifying siege -- rather like a cowboys and Indians scenario, only with eight-foot slavering beasts standing in for the Cherokees.

McKidd admits to some reservations about the shoot -- in particular the potential for macho bad behaviour that came with putting a load of actors in uniforms and giving them large guns to play with. 'Actually I was nervous,' he says. 'I was thinking: Oh God, if this turns into some kind of Lock, Stock thing ... but actually everybody was really cool. I mean, it was a bunch of blokes
and we were all getting really, really pished all the time. A good time was had by all. It was a real work-hard-play-hard environment. Christ, you can't put 10 guys in the same hotel for six weeks and not have that, but there was no male rivalry. We're all really good mates now. We bonded on it, but in a proper way, not in a luvvie way.'

The way his lip curls slightly when he says the word 'luvvie' suggests an innate suspicion of the pretentious, poncy side of acting. McKidd is not prone to histrionics and tantrums; he's the kind of good-natured, no-nonsense bloke you'd like as a regular in your local pub. He's still the kid who was raised in down-to-earth Elgin, who, at the age of seven, couldn't allow himself to cry during ET because he was watching it with his dad. 'We walked home,' he recalls. 'It was a summer's night. And my mum was sitting watching television, and she just turned and my dad was in the doorway and I was just holding it back. She said, 'What was it like?' And I was like, 'It was sad.' And I was crying for about an hour. My dad was like, 'He's no son of mine.''

Deep down, he's also still the kid who was so blown away by ET that he used to lie in the bath imagining that a limousine would pull into the cul-de-sac and Steven Spielberg would knock at the door, asking him to be Elliot in ET: The Sequel. And perhaps it's the occasional glint of childlike enthusiasm for the job that makes him so appealing as an actor -- although he admits that over-excitement nearly brought him to grief on the set of Dog Soldiers.

'I remember the first day. I flew there on the Sunday. I'd just finished this play, and drove straight out into the middle of the woods in Luxembourg, got into an army uniform and had my head shaved. And I meet this guy, this scary big guy -- he was teaching us manoeuvres. I was getting into it, really up for it. And we had these big utility belts on and I dived down to the ground, and I don't know what was in it, but it just went bang. And I just got this huge pain. I'd broke my rib. I was like, 'Oh this is so typical, man. You're just too excited.''

It turned out the rib was not broken, just severely bruised -- although it took McKidd two days to admit that he'd hurt himself. 'I didn't let on, because I just felt such a twat. Eventually I was hobbling about and people were going, 'What's wrong with you?' They took me straight down to the hospital.'

Interview over, McKidd is summoned downstairs to pose among the artfully arranged twigs and leaves. Balanced on the mantelpiece is the disembodied head of a werewolf. He gives it an affectionate pat. Kevin McKidd: altogether nice bloke and friend to animals. Even the ones that recently tried to rip his legs off.

Dog Soldiers is released on Friday

Sunday Herald 5 May 2002

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