Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
home-grown Scottish film industry. Writer and director David McKenzie hit the headlines
in 2003 with
Young Adam
, which starred Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton, and won
BAFTAs for best actor, best actress, best director and best film. McKenzie more recently
gave us
Hallam Foe
(2007) and
Perfect Sense
(2011).
Other Scottish directorial talent includes Kevin Macdonald, who made
Touching the
Void
(2003),
The Last King of Scotland
(2006) and
State of Play
(2009), and Andrea
Arnold, who directed
Red Road
(2006) and the BAFTA-winning
Fish Tank
(2009).
SCOTTISH ACTORS
Scotland's most famous actor is, of course, Sir Sean Connery (1930-), the original and ar-
guably best James Bond, and star of dozens of other hit films including
Highlander
(1986),
The Name of the Rose
(1986),
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(1989),
The
Hunt for Red October
(1990) and
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
(2003). Con-
nery started life as 'Big Tam' Connery, sometime milkman and brickie, born in a tenement
in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh.
Other Scottish actors who have achieved in-
ternational recognition include Robert Carlyle,
who starred in
Trainspotting
(1996),
The Full
Monty
(1997) - the UK's most commercially
successful film -
The World Is Not Enough
(1999) and
28 Weeks Later
(2007); Ewan
McGregor, who appeared in
Trainspotting,
the most recent Star Wars films,
Angels and
Demons
(2009) and
The Ghost
(2010); and Kelly Macdonald, yet another
Trainspotting
alumna who went on to appear in
Gosford Park
(2001),
No Country for Old Men
(2007)
and voiced heroine Merida in
Brave
(2012).
It's less widely known that Scotland produced some of the stars of silent film, including
Eric Campbell (the big, bearded villain in Charlie Chaplin's films) and Jimmy Finlayson
(the cross-eyed character in Laurel and Hardy films); in fact, English-born Stan Laurel
grew up and made his acting debut in Glasgow.
For a guide to Scottish film locations check out
Architecture
There are interesting buildings all over Scotland, but Edinburgh has a particularly rich
heritage of 18th- and early-19th-century architecture, and Glasgow is noted for its superb
Victorian buildings.
