One of the most appealing characters in Joel & Ethan Coen's brilliantly realized No Country for Old Men is Llewellyn Moss' young bride, Carla Jean, and the psychotic criminal Anton Chigurh's determination to hold her responsible for her husband's actions provides some of the movie's most tense and compelling moments. So fully does actress Kelly Macdonald inhabit the role — projecting youthful innocence, patience, confusion and understanding, and a near-perfect west Texas accent — that it took me some time to realize that she is, in fact, that Kelly Macdonald, a Glaswegian actress whose own broad burr couldn't be further than the high-plains drawl of her charcter in the film. Macdonald first came to fame after being cast, more or less on a fluke, as Ewan McGregor's ill-fated girlfriend in Trainspotting, a character as far removed from Carla Jean psychologically and emotionally as she is physically.
In a lengthy and engaging interview in the London Telegraph, Macdonald discusses her hardscrabble working-class background, the struggles she's faced as someone whose every role has been difficult to win, and her own doubts and misgivings about her talent and the occasions on which she's thought herself a fraud based on her lack of any formal training or experience as an actress. "After Trainspotting," she confesses, "because I wasn't trained, I was sure I would never act in another film again. Even though I've now done many films, the idea that I've just happened on this career has never really gone away."