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‘I’m less apologetic now’: Kelly Macdonald on her Trainspotting teen highs and hitting her stride in her 40s

She hid in the toilets during the Trainspotting shoot – yet became a screen sensation. As the star plays a police therapist in new Netflix thriller Dept Q, she explains why today’s young female actors leave her in awe

Q in which her character, Dr Rachel Irving, weary of her client DCI Carl Morck, plants herself down behind her desk to eat her packed lunch in front of him. In the show – adapted from novels by the Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen and brought to the screen by Scott Frank, who was also behind the Netflix hit The Queen’s Gambit – Morck is made to see Irving after he survives a shooting. I was always pretending, and it was pretty private, like in my bedroom.” She was reminded of it recently because her older son is doing exams; Macdonald did fairly well at English because she would learn dialogue in her room.

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