‘WHEN CHOICES ARE MADE ALMOST ALGORITHMICALLY, I THINK THAT IS THE DEATH OF CREATIVITY’
Quietly one of the hardest-working actors around, George MacKay is typically busy when Total Film catches up with the ever-affable star at the Glasgow Film Festival in mid-March. Here to promote his latest role(s) in Bertrand Bonello's unnerving, metaphysical romance The Beast, he'll be rolling into production on his next movie in a matter of days. ‘I feel genuinely so grateful for all the work I get to do,’ MacKay says from a Glasgow hotel room best described as functional. ‘I'm wary of sounding wanky, but I do have a real love for work.’
A professional actor since the age of 10, when he was cast as Curly in P.J. Hogan's Peter Pan, MacKay has habitually appeared in multiple projects a year ever since. Born in Hammersmith, MacKay leapfrogged typical child-actor roles on TV, instead winning kid parts in adult productions, with early breaks in the likes of Defiance, alongside Daniel Craig, and HBO mini-series Tsunami: The Aftermath.
After finding his voice in his teens, MacKay let his pipes do the talking in Dexter Fletcher's 2013 Proclaimers jukebox musical Sunshine on Leith, and displayed his range by appearing in Kevin Macdonald's dystopian romance How I Live Now that same year. In 2016, he earned plaudits as Viggo Mortensen's headstrong eldest son in Captain Fantastic – displaying early signs of what would become a fascination with intense, transformative physicality.
MacKay's career since has been defined by a series of challenging, wildly varied roles that – coupled with the choice to keep his personal life out of the limelight – make him a rare character actor with leading-man credentials. Whether a sympathetic member of the Hitler Youth in Where Hands Touch, a patient undergoing treatment for clinical lycanthropy in Wolf, a misanthropic graffiti artist in I Came By, or a closeted gay man who commits a homophobic hate crime in Femme, MacKay's choices do not adhere to the typical movie-star playbook.
In and – released within weeks of each other in the early pre-pandemic months of 2020 – MacKay did some of his best work to date, essaying young men at war, possessed by a single-minded determination to see their journeys through to the end. To play Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, MacKay underwent an intense period of preparation, writing in character as Kelly, forming a band with fellow cast-mates and's ‘one-shot’ odyssey across the European battlefield.
