Shauna Macdonald as Catherine in The Rocket Post
Ask most people what they were doing five years ago and you’ll be greeted by a blank look – but for Shauna Macdonald – then an actress in training – it was a time that offered her first big break.
She was picked to take on the role of schoolteacher Catherine MacKay in period romance The Rocket Post and took time out from her course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow to shoot it.
But once the cameras had stopped rolling, the project fell into the long grass, with the hunt for a distributor taking almost half a decade. In fact, the film – which is now on limited release in Scotland – has taken so long to reach the screens that the director Stephen Whittaker has passed away, the original producer quit film-making altogether and Shauna is now a much more established name, with roles in TV drama Spooks and hit horror film The Descent (pictured below right) gracing her CV.
“I was in the second year at drama college and I took a term out to do it,” says Shauna. “If it had come out it would have been a huge career break. But it was still a break in that I learnt more in those eight weeks than I did doing stuff at the Academy. Not that I didn’t learn there but it was just that that time on the film was concentrated on me and I was working all day every day really hard for eight weeks in June, really challenging, emotional and eclectic.”
And five years on, there’s no trace of regret that the project has taken so long to reach cinemas.
“I kind of put it to rest a bit in my mind,” adds Shauna “After two years of it not being released I thought, oh well, that’s it now. But it kept making a bit of a comeback, it won an award in New York and there was always screenings or if I put ‘rocket post’ into the internet there was always something going on somewhere and its been passed over from lots of people.
“But really I did think, it’s taken so long now that the chances of it getting a release were pretty slim – so I’m over the moon.”
The film’s win at the Stony Brook Festival in New York back in 2004 and a series of special screenings kept the hopes afloat until finally Lionsgate signed the deal for a UK release. Despite the wait Shauna has retained her enthusiasm for the film and is only sorry that its release is so limited.
“I just think it’s a shame that its such a small release because it’s such an epic film. To have a small release is a bit of an oxymoron. Usually groovy, hip, indie flicks that can get away with this sort of small release and it builds on their DVD release and word of mouth. I’m intrigued to see how it’s going to work having such a small release for such a big film.”
Although the film is set on the tiny island of Scarp it has an epic sweep. It tells the true story of a German rocket scientist (played by Danish star Ulrich Thomsen) who came to the island just before the outbreak of World War II to work on a rocket that would send post to the mainland. Shauna's character falls for the German despite being on the verge of getting betrothed to the local doctor (Kevin McKidd, pictured left with Shauna) - although the actress reveals that this part of the story is fiction.
Shauna, who has family in the Outer Hebrides, says: “The true story is not my story. The true story is that the scientists do come to the Isle of Scarp and build a rocket to shoot the post. My character didn’t exist. There would have been a schoolteacher on that island, so I could have been there. But if she did exist it wasn’t documented that she fell in love with the German scientist.
“You can choose to do a lot of research – which I did – but then you can also choose to forget it because you’re not making a documentary. And it’s also under the interpretation of the director. You’re trying to tell a story.”
The 25-year-old star has lived in London since graduating but she certainly hasn’t ruled out a move back to Edinburgh, where she grew up.
“I love Edinburgh I miss it a lot, so who knows I may make another move up. But even if you do live in Scotland you’re fully prepared to spend a lot of time away from your home so if I did ever move it would be to have a nice base to move from.
But even though she doesn’t live in Scotland’s capital any more her work brings her there frequently. She performed in Realism at the city’s Lyceum theatre during this year’s festival and has almost completed work on an Irvine Welsh film for television, set in the city.
“I’m working on Wedding Bells,” she says. “It’s a new film for Channel 4, It stars Michelle Gomez, Shirley Henderson, Kathleen McDermott and myself and it follows the five days leading up to Michelle Gomez’s character Amanda’s wedding.
“A lot of people have been trailing it as Trainspotting for women but it’s not really like that. It’s about friends unveiling and unravelling the truth about each other and the dark secrets. And because it’s Irvine Welsh the secrets are very dark and very disturbing and quite tragic and it sort of maps their very eclectic firework couple of days.
“We’re almost finished. We had one week in Edinburgh and the rest is being shot around London – as you do.”
Shauna is busy with sci-fi film Mutant Chronicles offering her an action role and psychological thriller The Farm currently in pre-production. But, as for the future, she isn’t too bothered as long as she can avoid being typecast.
“I love being able to work on different genre films, that no one has filed me away in a nice little box yet and I can do lots of different types of film and genres and different types of characters. If I have an ideal career or strive for anything it would be to carry on being able to do that. I would hate to be known just for the Descent or just for the The Rocket Post it would be great if I could be know as an actress who could, well, just act.”
