“Me and Orson Welles” Star Christian McKay on Channeling the Boy Genius Filmmaker

Wall Street Journal ^ | NOVEMBER 27, 2009

[nickcarraway]

In “Me and Orson Welles,” director Richard Linklater’s effervescent historical romp about Welles’ 1937 theater production of “Julius Caesar,” Christian McKay steals the show as the temperamental director. (WSJ film critic Joe Morgenstern calls him “an excellent English actor who bears, or somehow simulates, a facial resemblance to the great man, and nails Welles’s expression of pouty, aggrieved amusement.)

Welles is a character that the 36-year-old McKay is quite familiar with. He first began playing the director five years ago in the one-man show “Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles,” which sold out audiences at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004 and played Off-Broadway in New York last year. The charming and chatty McKay spoke to us about how he was cast and his connection to Welles.

The Wall Street Journal: Despite having an injury, Richard Linklater expressly flew to New York to catch your final performance in “Rosebud” to check out your acting. That must have been exciting.

Christian McKay: It was one of those things that I’ve read about, that divine luck that actors sometimes get — but mostly not. I mean, I’ve a very lucky person and I’ve had a very contented life, but I always thought that kind of luck was beyond me. With his coming to see me, I had my own little Cinderella moment, my word.

Consequently, he invited you down to Austin for a good old-fashioned screen test.