In 1983, Satrapi was sent to Austria by her parents where she attended the Lycée Français de Vienne. She returned to Iran after graduating high school where she attended university. She received her diploma and then received a Masters degree in Visual Communication. At 21, Satrapi married an Iranian man, but the marriage lasted only three years. Satrapi has written about these events in her later life in the second installment of her graphic novel series, Persepolis.

Satrapi became well known for her work through the publication of the Persepolis novels. First published in France, the novels were published in the United States in the early 2000′s where they won numerous awards and much critical acclaim. Satrapi co-wrote and co-directed an animated film version of Persepolis which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. In 2008, the film was nominated for an Academy Award. Satrapi continues her animation and film-making work at her home in France.

After Persépolis, Marjane Satrapi’s new movie Chicken with Plums, also co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, is also based on another graphic novel by Satrapi, it is the story of a talented violinist who has decided to die. While he recalls major events from his life, eternal themes are raised: death, creation, love… The movie turns out to be both funny and dramatic, as is the film’s director, as Paul Fischer discovered when he met during her recent visit to Los Angeles.

Paul Fischer: Persopilis was a very personal film for you. How much more personal was Chicken with Plums?

Marjane Satrapi: It was much more personal, actually, because it’s true that in Persepolis I talk about myself, but I basically use myself to talk about whatever surrounded me. The basis of Persepolis is how, when all the reasons of the world become bigger than an individual, how does an individual grow up, how does he or she deal with all of that. Also when you talk about yourself, when you create a female character, I always make a kind of subconscious censorship, because it’s a place that’s very personal for me, and I know I’m being watched, so it’s a place I might not necessarily go, because you don’t want to show everything of yourself. When I wrote Chicken with Plums, the main character ia a male, so for me the connection between this man and me was not so direct, but I’m still very much like him. I’m a very unbearable, egoistic pig and at the same time I’m very charming, sentimental and romantic.

P.F:Which of those aspects of your personality is the most dominant?

M.S: It depends, but I just can get into something and become very obsessional and nothing else exists in the world for me and at the same time I can be very romantic and very charming I think.

P.F:Now thematically, this film is about love and regret. Were those themes something you could identify with?

M.S: I think there’s nothing worse in this world than to die for love. If there is one serious subject in this world, that would be it. That is the ONLY serious subject. And I think if you’re also honest with yourself, you can never survive a broken heart. Then we invent things like he or she was not good looking, he was not like this, or like that, but these are just excuses that are invented in order for us to survive and to go on. But if we are very honest , when our heart is broken, then it’s really broken and difficult to start from a broken heart. Now all of this is despite the fact I haven’t yet suffered from a broken heart. I’ve been married to the same guy for 17 years, which is the really the same as being to him for 117 years.

P.F:As ultimately tragic and sad Chicken with Plums is, I didn’t realize how funny it was going to be. Was it important to punctuate the film’s tragic elements with comedy?

M.S: Absolutely because life is like that. You don’t have total happiness but not total sadness either. I’ve had 5 years of war, but that doesn’t mean that your life stopped. On the contrary, because there are bombs every day, you realize that your life is very short, and maybe the next bomb is going to fall on your head. So you try to live the most possible , and my family never threw as many parties as there were during the war, because it was a way to survive. If you want to make a drama, you have to both construct and deconstruct it and at the end people will have believed in the drama, really go into the story.

P.F:Now you grew up during the Iran/Iraq war. How did that shape you as an artist?

M.S: When you live through these kinds of experiences, you pace the importance of things on an entirely different level. For me, I have this kind of optimistic attitude. For example if I fall down and break my hand I say: Oh, I could have been dead. So no problem, I’ve just broken one hand and so what’s the big deal? So I always have a bigger comparison and it’s I could have been dead.

P.F:So you’re a born optimist?

M.S:I’m actually very pessimistic because I always think the worst thing will happen and then that makes me optimistic, because since I’m always waiting for the worst to happen and it never happens, I’m always surprised. But I’ve always been obsessed with death which is why I wrote Chicken with Plums. Every day I wake up I look at myself and I go: Oh my god the blood is going through my veins and I’m still alive. It’s still surprising for me that I still can be alive. I’m still surprised every day.

Chicken with Plums opens in Select Cities on August 31.

Stretching himself meant going after a completely different type of role in Peter Hedges’ whimsical but beautifully told The Odd Life of Timothy Green. “I just liked how open hearted this movie was, in an unashamed It’s a Wonderful Life kind of way. I know that a lot of us actor guys are always looking for the next cool thing we can do, and I just thought it was strangely cool about how uncool this movie was. It’s like having a conversation and looking at someone directly in the eye. There’s a direct openness to this movie despite its magic dust quality. It says so much about family and love and hopefully lets you leave the cinema with something really great.” Edgerton and Garner play a childless couple, Jim and Cindy Green, who have tried everything to have a child. Desperate to cling on a small hope that perhaps something will happen, they come up with all the ideal qualities that would make the perfect child, write them down and place them in a box which they bury in the garden. The next day, Timothy [CJ Adams] miraculously appears, with leaves strewn to his feet, and pure love in his heart. But as Jim and Cindy discover, not only is there more to this child than meets the eye, but more to parenting than this couple could ever have imagined.

To land the role of Jim Green, Edgerton not only had to convince director Hedges, but also his on screen wife, Jennifer Garner, herself returning to movies after spending time raising her new young family. It was all about chemistry, and whether the two actors could be believable as an in love married couple. “I think chemistry is just that”, the actor explains. “It’s a chemistry you either have or you don’t and it’s either going to be there from the beginning or not. I mean you could develop a relationship, but Jennifer and I just liked each other from the moment we met. I just knew we were going to get along just fine. There are certain movies that I watch and go is that the only thing they might lack is that the guy and the girl just don’t click, or other movies like Out of Sight, it’s the complete opposite. And I hope with Timothy Green, not only is the chemistry between Jen and I is great, but also between CJ and I and CJ and Jennifer and the two of us with CJ.”

While Joel’s Hollywood career is now more than just bubbling along, the actor still not only calls Australia home, but returns often to work, as an actor, producer and an accomplished screenwriter. “I’d like to be able to spend as much time at home as possible. I want to be part of the Australian film industry, because I feel when I’ve been absent from it for a number of years and I don’t know what’s going on, I feel like I’ve missed out on something. And I like working at that scale, small budgets where story is the only thing you can really concentrate on, and where you can be really creative in ways other than throwing money at problems. And our company is very important to us, so it’s not only me going back to work on projects, it’s going back to expand the body of work of our company.” Joel has written a new script which begins shooting in Sydney later this year. He says that he has become increasingly drawn to writing as much as he is to acting, these days. “I just love it. Most days I’d be writing something,” the actor says and admits that screenwriting “really began as a way for us to employ ourselves, because nobody was giving us jobs and so we needed to make short films to show people that we could work in front of a camera, so we had to write them and make them. We didn’t want to be filmmakers at first but in making the films, we realized we just loved the process so we continued doing it.” Now writing has changed for Edgerton, he says. “it’s now something I’m compelled to do.” Joel says his writing has evolved “a lot through Hollywood. I thank every Hollywood writer who’s had a script that’s landed on my desk, because I’ve evolved as the writer I am after reading other writers’ stuff.” He wants to write scripts in which he says give him the opportunity to play different complex characters. Such is the case with this latest Australian script, the currently titled Felony, which revolves around a decorated police officer, to played by Edgerton, whose life instantly changes after he lies about a running a cyclist off the road after having a celebratory drink with his fellow officers. “I like to create characters that have both a strength and vulnerability, that have integrity yet go through some form of losing that integrity. That to me, on a character level, is something I am drawn to, characters who are seeking to set things right and going through a hard road to understand that.”

Edgerton will also be seen in the eagerly anticipated film, The Great Gatsby opening at Xmas. The young actor who grew up in Sydney’s working class western suburbs is on a roll.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green Opens Nationwide on August 14th.

The film, which began to take shape at the beginning, explored the titular Queen, Jackie Siegel, former beauty queen and trophy wife to billionaire David Siegel, a self-made billionaire who made his fortune on timeshares. The film follows these two and their family, as they relish in their luxury, only to have it all taken away during the financial crisis. Director Greenfield has been consistently fascinated with America’s obsession with materialism throughout much of her career, “and the influence of popular culture on our values.” Greenfield says it may have come from her childhood. She grew up in Los Angeles, her parents were professors and “I went to a school where there were a lot of Hollywood people, so it was all very flashy and kind of status oriented compared to what I had been used to.” Her first project, interestingly enough, was about the French aristocracy “and looking at this milieu of people who were elite and hjad this class, but did no have money anymore. So in a way, the Queen of Versailles was like going the opposite route: the new rich, an aspirational monarchy, and then in the end, a failed monarchy.”

Greenfield admits that she was shocked at the financial demise of this particular ‘monarchy’, when it came, “because I thought it likely that a billionaire would have a multitude of layers of cushions. In fact, even when things started getting tough with his business, I never thought it would effect them personally and I really didn’t know until 2010 when they had to put the house on the market, how bad it was and it was on that trip that David told me that he’d gambled everything on his business and not put anything aside. He said: ‘I made two mistakes. One, I never took anything off the table, and the other was I personally signed for all of the business loans.’ So he believed so much in the business which I think is what made him and the story so interesting for me, that he WAS the American dream in both its virtues and its flaws. He was a self-made man who believed so much in his business, that he put everything he had into it, to the point of not even putting money aside for college for his kids.”

One of the film’s notable criticisms is the difficulty audiences have in feeling sympathy for characters who personify the 1%, the mega rich who take little responsibility for their actions and fall on their sword as a result. Asked what the challenges were for her Greenfield to make a film, whose protagonists are not necessarily sympathetic, the director pauses and refutes the argument. “What I have been pleased about, talking to audiences, is that people DO have a surprising amount of empathy for the characters, particularly Jackie, and I think the thing that’s surprising about it, is they don’t at the beginning. In the beginning, they wonder who are these people, what is this dream, this crazy and this is the worst of excess. By the end they feel differently about them as they see the stress and strain of the household, and the problems that they have are in a way not all that different from many other people who have financial problems. And I think the key to that is that there’s something in their characters and story that allows you to see your own flaws and your own mistakes. For me their story is really a big version of so many people.

The director had no idea how the film’s narrative would develop, but says that, thematically, the change in the couple’s own narrative, “turned the story into an allegory about the overreaching of America and the mistakes we all made that led to the crash, and the inherent flaws in the American dream as we have conceived it.”

The Queen of Versallies is now in a limited release in LA.

In her latest film, People like Us, the actress is co-starring as Lilian, a tough minded mother married to a philandering music figure whose death from cancer reunites her with her estranged son, whose discovery of an alternate family sees both their worlds crashing down. Chris Pine plays Sam, a guy whose career is about to take a major nosedive. Suddenly, he learns that his father has passed away, and he finds it very difficult to fly back home to attend the funeral services. Sam didn’t have a good relationship with his father and being back home isn’t helping him. His mom (Michelle Pfeiffer) is mad and upset that Sam has avoided them for so long. Sam’s girlfriend (Olivia Wilde) is totally clueless about the broken relationship he has with his parents. Ready to leave and try to save his career, Sam meets up with his dad’s attorney and finds out that his father left $150,000 to a young boy, who he finds out to be his nephew. In need of the money himself, Sam decides to investigate and later meet his half-sister, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), and her son, Josh, to see if he should honor his father’s wishes and give them the money. But he fails to reveals his true relationship with Frankie, which further complicates all of their lives.

For Pfeiffer, this character is a tough role to play, a woman constantly in denial, marrying a man whom she knows will be inevitably unfaithful. “A lot of women of my mother’s generation do things a certain way, they got married and it wasn’t encouraged for them to have a career, and they were supported by their husbands. Many of them felt trapped in those relationships.” In equating those women to her character, Lilian, “she does love her husband and there are those kinds of people that are incredibly charming, really smart and dynamic as well as manipulative and narcissistic, but you fall in love with that charming side to them, and that’s the part that hooks you and you become entangled with.” So when asked if the actress can identify with her character, the actress glares in mock disbelief. “I think anyone with that kind of personality is a magnet, and I think everyone is drawn to that kind of personality, but some people are more vulnerable to it and I think at a certain point , certainly when you’re young, you want the person who doesn’t want you. But as you mature, you hopefully grow out of that, but some people don’t and they get stuck there.” But the actress insists on being non judgmental. “Women like Lillian are a sign of her times and then she’s trapped.”

Pfeiffer was also married at a young age before marrying renowned TV writer/producer David E. Kelley. Michelle Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California and graduated from Fountain Valley High School in 1976, and attended one year at the Golden West College, where she studied to become a court reporter. But it was while working as a supermarket checker at Vons, a large Southern California grocery chain, that she realized her true calling. She was married to actor/director Peter Horton in 1981 and she then had a three year relationship with actor Fisher Stevens. When that didn’t work out, Pfeiffer decided she didn’t want to wait any longer before having her own family, and in March of 1993, she adopted a baby girl, Claudia Rose. On November 13th of the same year, she married lawyer-turned-writer/producer David E. Kelley, creator of Picket Fences (1992), Chicago Hope (1994), The Practice (1997), and Boston Public (2000). Pfeiffer’s has also starred in some of Hollywood’s most iconic films following her debut in Grease 2, from The Fabulous Baker Boys to Batman Returns, in which she played Catwoman, a role being reprised by Anne Hathaway in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. And no, she insists, she did not advise her successor on any aspect of playing the character. “I’m just excited to see the movie. I love the whole franchise and I’m a huge fan of Anne. She’s so talented.”

Pfeiffer continues to find rich characters to play in what has been a bumper year for the actress, having co-starred in New Year’s Eve and Burton’s Dark Shadows, as well as People Like Us. In continuing to find projects that interest her, “my criteria is still the same, in that I’m still just looking for something good, well written, interesting, territory I may have not covered before, interesting people to work with, which is why I don’t work so much,” she adds laughingly. “But at the same time I’m limited because I’m careful about when I’m working, how much, where it’s going to take place, because my son’s still at home.” But yet she still feels, despite her very strong criteria for working, “that my best performance is still in me but I think all artists feel that.” Will she know if it happens? “I hope so, but maybe not because that’s what keeps me going and keeps me interested. I notice a lot of people who win the Academy Award go for long periods some time when they don’t go to work and I worry about them, because there’s a lot of wanting to achieve that which keeps you going and then when you achieve it you go: what now? And I don’t ever want to lose that fire.”

Asked how she feels when she sees some of her earlier work, Pfeiffer says “I can’t stand listening to my voice, so I cannot change the channel on the TV fast enough.” But asked if there was one role she might actually watch longer than others, her answer is surprising. “Maybe Grease 2 just because I’m the most removed from it. It was a lifetime ago really so I don’t take any responsibility. I’m SO young.”

Set in 1870 New Mexico, immediately after the end of the Civil War, a young woman named Martha (Claire Bowen) blasts a man in the face with a rifle, who had been in the midst of fleeing on horseback. We eventually learn that this man was her father when her prodigal brother, Wade (Barlow Jacobs), returns home, wary of facing the parent that vowed to shoot him if he ever were to return. Forced to kill several men thinking him to be a deserter and then traitor, Wade comes into possession of a strange letter from his father begging him to return home. Tense family history and strange circumstances surrounding his father’s close-casket funeral cause Wade a former Wyoming sheriff for the past several years, to question his sister and her suspicious, tough minded husband, Heck (David Call), both determined and desperate to sell their spacious land in order to run off to San Francisco and open a hotel. Turns out sister Martha and brother Wade are quite close, and she’s overjoyed to learn that he hasn’t been dead all these years, after all. But her fierce loyalty ends up having dire consequences.

Moshe’s challenge, in writing Dead Man’s Burden, was to make a western that played homage to the classics of the past but was itself somewhat original. “A great western has to follow certain ideas and you have to know what they are going in. Your characters have to be defined by action, you have to have wide open landscapes and there are certain aesthetic looks that people expect and certain dynamics. Once you have that, you can then play with the story and find stories that are interesting and inspiring in the genre.” Moshe has been a long time fan of the genre and its historical milieu. “I fell in love with the civil war through college and saw westerns as a child, and it’s what I love and read, so when I was putting it together, I would read a lot of western scripts, watch a lot of western movies and look at a lot of references and find ideas. I would think about a scene, for example, and think about how other filmmakers would deal with a similar scene and then give my own take on it.” Asked how he balances the mythological facets of the genre with the more contemporary realism that today’s audiences expect, Moshe explains that “it’s a matter of staying true to the tropes of the western mythology, the things that people expect from a western and giving really fully formed characters. What people really expect from a story is characters and motivations and what they can relate to. The idea of somebody being purely good or purely evil works on The Avengers, but a modern audience is more sophisticated in their storytellings and of what they expect in terms of motivation.” And in staying true to the genre, Moshe resisted shooting his film digitally, which is now the norm, and insisted on using film as a means of visually expressing the film’s expansive landscape. “There was no question we wouldn’t shoot on digital and we were going to have to figure out how to shoot this on film. And it wasn’t that much more expensive and so much more gratifying.”

While so many directors study film specifically at a film school, the Midwestern born Moshe went to a Amherst College in Massachusetts, a liberal arts college. “I didn’t really study film even though I knew I wanted to be in film in some way in college. So I started interning in New York.” Moshe began life in the film industry as a sales agent, learning the business side of film, and started producing such films as Kurt Cobain About a Son and last year’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, amongst others.

With his directorial first feature under his belt and its having garnered positive reviews from the festival, Moshe is hoping the film will get a commercial release. In the meantime, he says if given the opportunity, he is not letting the west die in the cinematic sunset. “I’ve written another western that I’m hoping to shoot if I can get the financing, and I have a television project in the works: a kind of modern western”, he concludes laughingly.

At the center of this compelling drama is veteran anchorman Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), often referred to as the “Jay Leno” of newsmen — a conservative, safe kind of guy who found his groove with solid ratings by delivering the news down the middle of the road, and refusing to make waves.

But things change when Will delivers a very public, mad-as-hell meltdown at a prestigious university, where he dares tell his student audience that America is not, as has been suggested, the greatest country in the world, shattering perceptions. Forced to take a subsequent management-enforced vacation, he returns, stunned, to discover that his cynical boss (Sam Waterston) has hired former war correspondent, MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), to executive produce his show.

For Will, this new arrangement is a nightmare, because he and MacKenzie once dated, and their relationship apparently ended disastrously. On the other hand, she’s the one person who can jolt the apathy right out of him.

We then discover that the show takes place at the tail end of 2010, turning the show into a period piece as actual news events are explored, beginning with the 2010 BP disaster that engulfed the Louisiana coast. It’s a story that indeed, puts the once safe anchor into aggressive attack mode and out of an apathetic slumber.

Audiences who are not liberals will hate this show. Despite what he might claim, Sorkin wears his politics on his chest. He did so with The West Wing and things aren’t that different as he explores the frenetic pace and urgency of cable news in this new era of the instant sound bite. But Sorkin is a genius when it comes to heightened reality and this is no exception. He takes real events and uses them to explore these larger than life extraordinary characters who speak fast and curios with unending witticisms. This is not supposed to be the real world. Even Sorkin will be the first to admit its all fantasy embedded in a certain historical reality.
It’s still compelling to watch and listen to. Great speeches enunciated by great actors from the always magnificent Jeff Daniels to a luminous performance by the underrated Emily Mortimer to a delightful turn by vet Sam Waterston. Briskly and energetically directed, the 75 minute pilot goes at breakneck speed and never lets up. It’s ferociously good television.

At the panel discussion, the verbose Sorkin dared say he doesn’t know anything, would not admit to me when I asked him if he was Don Quixote or Sancho Panza (there are quixotic references in the pilot) and also told me that he chose to set the series in the past to avoid creating fictional news stories. Fascinating television and equally fascinating discussion.

Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) have been best friends, lovers for half their lives, and have been married for the past 6 years. But Celeste is tired of Jesse’s lack of ambition and inherent laziness. In addition, their engaged friends Beth (Ari Graynor) and Tucker (Eric Christian Olsen) are annoyed and disturbed that a couple in the middle of a divorce is acting so cutesy And despite the sources of friction that still show up occasionally, they remain best friends, even if they do seem like they should inevitably be pulled back toward each other. At least, it seems that way until Celeste returns from a tour to promote her new book; the two weeks apart have changed the landscape considerably. He’s met an old flame who’s pregnant with his child and she’s still clinging on to the hope that the couple will get back together.

Director Lee Toland Krieger has a keen visual eye, as his lending of Los Angeles, possibly the most filmed city on the planet is bathed with rich vibrant color. Even typical landmarks, such as the Disney Concert Hall, look more visually alluring than usual, and the city becomes an integral component of a film rich in character. This is a very textured film, partly due to the sharp and wry script by Jones and McCormack as well as Krieger’s fluid and pact direction. It’s rare to find a romantic comedy that looks as beautiful and works as well as this.

Jones clearly created for herself a character full of flaws and insecurities because they’re fun to play. She’s not exactly a warm and sympathetic character whose cynicism is her ultimate downfall. But she grows on us and we want her to grow and chsnge which she does, eventually, if not reluctantly. The actress, best known for her work on TV’s Parks and Recreation, is a keen observer on the pitfalls of human behavior. This is her first script and should continue as a screenwriter. She’s also an infectious actor, and plays Celeste with gusto and emotional depth.

Samberg, also seen in the unfortunate That’s my Boy, complements Jones which makes one wonder how this couple lasted so long. His Jesse is less defined and Samberg is more low key and less interesting an actor than his costar, which really is the film’s one failing. But he’s appealing and natural enough and it’s easy to believe in the character’s own failings.

Emma Roberts steals the film in a otherwise extraneous subplot revolving around a spoiled and seemingly unintelligent teen pop diva, and the delightful Ari Graynor shines as the best friend.

Celeste and Jesse Forever is hardly groundbreaking by any means, but it takes a formula and gives it added depth and style. With a sharp well observed script and it’s beautiful direction, commercial prospects are very high for this Sony Classics release. It’s a sheer, exuberant delight.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around two very young children, Yaya aka Crazy (Willa Vy McAbee) and Johnny aka Thief (John Huck McAbee). You guessed it, the very young real life children of the director. After creating their own star map (or treasure map), Crazy and Thief set out to follow the various stars to see where they lead them.

There is little narrative cohesion in this dull and over simplistic tale featuring two children, one of whom, the cutesy John Huck’s Thief, can barely talk intelligently despite the interesting idea that once existed in the fragmented imagination of the film’s director. Divided into chapters, the film is like a road movie with more bumps than smooth tracks. There is next to no character development and the idea of casting your film with your own children in the hope of making it more relatable to families doesn’t gel. The two children are sweet but sweetness does not equal movie likability and they don’t possess that especially John Huck McAbee who comes across as simply annoying.

Known more as a music artist than filmmaker, McAbee’s greatest strength is his use of music in order to accentuate mood and narrative, and the film may well have succeeded had he used more music to define his thinly created characters. The issue of concern is what does one see as the purpose of cinema. If the point is to communicate with a broad audience then attention to script and character development, as well as casting, need to be properly explored. Audiences deserve to be drawn into a movie and Crazy & Thief simply fails to emotionally grab attention. It is as if the filmmaker asked his kids to do or say something and hope the camera loves them enough to forget that there is nothing there. One has no idea who these children are and there are no clues in this simplistic and haphazard script.

The film is loosely and unevenly directed and is one that redefines independent cinema and not in a good way. The sad truth is, it is a glorified home movie that should have remained at home and not in the public arena. Chances of any kind of commercial release are slim to none, given its increasingly negative response at the Los Angeles Film Festival. But at least the director’s kids had a good time, at our expense.

Set in medieval Scotland, McDonald voices teenager Merida, upset by the prearranged wedding plans set in motion by her father, King Fergus (Billy Connolly), and mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), where the neighboring clans vie for her affections in a series of sporting challenges. Deciding it was all to unfair, Merida runs off follows a trail of glowing wisps to a witch’s hut. There, she is given a magic cake that will “change” her mother’s mind regarding the upcoming marital plans. Queen Elinor does change but not as Merida hoped, for, the queen is transformed into a giant black bear while still retaining her human mind, but only for 48 hours.

Asked about whether she could identify with Merida, McDonald says “I wasn’t Merida-like when I was a teenager. I mean she’s very adventurous, outdoorsy and energetic, and I was not. I was but I was a teenage girl, so that was the thing that I zoned in on really. All teenagers are awful, but teenage girls are kind of worst I think, than teenage boys.”. Nor was the actress as rebellious as her character. “I could have done with a bit more of that to be honest, something to rebel against. My mum was easy-going and I didn’t have much to rebel against. I moved away from home when I was 17 and that was fine and I made my own choices quite early on.”

Those choices would eventually lead to acting in her native Scotland and her career began while working as a barmaid. She saw a leaflet advertising an open casting session for Trainspotting and decided to audition, winning the part of Diane, the underage seductress to Ewan McGregor’s Renton. Other roles include Mary O’Neary in Two Family House and an actress playing Peter Pan in Finding Neverland. She also had major roles in Robert Altman’s British period piece Gosford Park, where she played an aristocrat’s maid, as well as in Intermission (2003), as Deirdre.

On television, her highest-profile roles have been in two BBC dramas, the Paul Abbott serial State of Play (2003) and the one-off Richard Curtis piece The Girl in the Café (2005). Both of these were directed by David Yates, and both also starred Bill Nighy. For her performance in The Girl in the Café, Macdonald was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2006, and won an Emmy.

Macdonald starred in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee, as the scullery maid Evangeline, and has since had supporting roles in A Cock and Bull Story (2006), and the Coen brothers’ Academy Award-winning No Country for Old Men, (2007), Her agent was originally unsure she was right for the latter part, and Macdonald is reported as having to “fight for the role”. Her persistence paid off, however, as she was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress. Other films where she had supporting roles include Choke (2008), as Dr. Paige Marshall, the film which was adapted by Clark Gregg from the 2001 Chuck Palahniuk novel, In the Electric Mist (2009) (based on James Lee Burke’s In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993)), as Kelly Drummond, alongside Tommy Lee Jones and John Goodman and Skellig (2009), as Louise. She also played the lead in The Merry Gentleman (2008), as Kate Frazier. But she is best known for her current portrayal of Margaret Schroeder on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

But now a very new generation will recognize the talents of the Scottish actress, and she’s having a blast talking up her latest movie and character. “I had so much fun. I got to play this part that I would never get to play in a live action film because I’m not a teenager and I got to be really cheeky and obnoxious to my mom, which was quite fun. It was just the most fun I’ve ever had at work without having to wear a costume and get my hair done.”

And there was no question that the actress take this on, even before she read a script. “I think as soon as I was asked to go in and meet some people from Pixar, I mean, just the name Pixar, you know it’s going to be special. So, I had no doubt in my mind that the finished product was going to be just really special and cutting edge, That’s the great thing about Pixar, is like every movie that they bring out is like the most cutting edge technology. But you look back at the films, and Toy Story was 15 years ago and you don’t look back and think, oh, if they had the technology they have now it could be such a better film. It still stands up and what they do is extraordinary and to think that comes from the top. John Lasseter is a very special man and it’s just people that love their jobs and do their jobs very well.”

McDonald is currently shooting the new season of the Emmy winning Boardwalk Empire, but the actress was tight lipped about what fans of the show can expect. “We’re sort of past the halfway point, so we will see. But she’s still alive, she’s alive, she’s alive,” she concludes laughingly.

When we first meet Dodge, his wife Linda, has run away with a lover that Dodge was unaware of (ironically played by Carell’s real-life wife). Partly suicidal and drowning his sorrows drinking cough medicine, he accidentally comes across a cute neighbor in his apartment building, Penny (Keira Knightley), who’s been accidentally receiving Dodge’s mail for more than a year but has neglected to mention it (because the two of them have never actually met).

But he helps her out (she’s dumping her faithless boyfriend played by Adam Brody) and finds a fateful piece of mail from his high-school girlfriend, the only woman he’s ever really loved, the one that got away. She wrote him before the end was conclusive, hoping to possibly connect, if he’s free.

So Dodge and Penny take off in a car — she, promising to help him track down the old girlfriend; he, promising to help her find a way back to England to see her family before the end hits.

Thus begins a road trip of sorts, a study in connection between two disparate souls who find something within themselves. Some critics have unfairly commented that Carell and Knightley are too odd a pairing for this to be believable, but this is a film about two lost souls who find each other and both actors are so exquisite and emotionally truthful that it is very believable for these two to have found each other.

End of the World is a very impressive directorial debut from Scafaria, an emotionally layered script, beautifully written and nicely directed. The film is tonally unexpected, with moments of dark humor, balanced with a high degree of romantic sentiment, but given its setting, it seems more than appropriate.

Carell is a very visually nuanced actor and here he is perfect as an Everyman figure, soulless and empty, searching for life’s meaning at its very conclusion. But it is Knightley who constantly surprises us with a rich, funny, passionate performance that is textually complex. It is a side of her one rarely sees on screen and she is fabulous. There are other indelible moments from a trucker [beautifully played by William Peterson] who has hired a hitman to kill him before the meteor does, to a beautiful moment between Carell’s Dodge and the father who deserted him [Martin Sheen at his best].

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is a beautiful work, that highlights the best in the film’s lead actors but gives us a story about the very essence of humanity, and in these tough times, a film like this is something to be savored.