DANIELLE MACDONALD Finally free to be me

Danielle Macdonald has been in lockdown in Los Angeles. It’s not ideal, but the Northern Beaches girl whose star has been soaring in Hollywood these past few years is counting her blessings – and she’s had a few. At 29, she’s worked alongside Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston and Joanna Lumley. She’s sung with Dolly Parton. She’s made a bunch of films she’s genuinely proud of and one that she reckons would have, if she’d seen it as a teen, changed her life.

For a while there, people who had seen Danielle play Willowdean in the heartwarming 2018 beauty pageant comedy Dumplin’, would approach her in the street and cry.

“They were so touched by the movie,” she says with her warm, sunny smile, “and I understood why. It was the first time these people had felt seen in a film. Seen in every way – as a friend, a love interest, a lead in their own right. That affected them in ways that they didn’t think they would be affected. It was powerful and it affected me too, because there I was thinking, ‘I wish I’d gone to see this movie when I was growing up, but maybe I’m alone in feeling that,’ and then I realised I wasn’t alone.”