George MacKay may seem like a conventional leading man – white, cishet, handsome, privately educated in London, named George – but there’s nothing conventional about his movie projects. In the last two years, the 33-year-old actor has led a trio of director-driven films that have used his Hollywood-approved physique to challenge our notions of masculinity. In Femme, MacKay depicts a tattooed homophobe who secretly cruises at a gay sauna; in The Beast, he’s three atrocious romantic prospects, including an incel inspired by Elliot Rodger; now, in The End, he’s a young adult in an underground bunker who’s never witnessed the outside world or the women who inhabit it.
“Those three films are so completely the director’s vision, and masculinity’s a theme I’ve been interested in,” says MacKay. “With all characters, whatever their identity, sexuality, class, and views – I’m intrigued and excited by people that are full of contradictions. I don’t want to sound like I’m saying, ‘This is me fighting the fight for difficult characters.’ That’s wanky. But life’s about being surprised and curious. If our curiosity is just fed with something that’s palatable to what we already like, it narrows our imagination. I’m strident about being part of work that challenges that. It’s not any big moral thing. That’s also just my taste.”
I’m sat next to MacKay in March, in the same King’s Cross office building where I interviewed Joshua Oppenheimer, the writer and director of The End, six months prior. Oppenheimer claimed that The End, a post-apocalyptic musical, boasts the most committed cast of any film in the last decade. Does MacKay agree? “I’m sure the guys from Anora and The Brutalist would argue differently,” he says, laughing. “But there was a real rigour required for The End. The music was beyond my musical capabilities. I had to learn the score, and practise singing it. Even the dialogue is incredibly specific. All those stammers and stutters are prescribed in the script.”
When Oppenheimer offered MacKay a role in The End, the actor was already a fan of the director’s two previous films, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, both documentaries about the 1965 Indonesian genocide. “That was all I needed to see,” says MacKay. “They’re such specific visions, and I could see that, thematically, this is what he wanted to continue to excavate.” Just as The Act of Killing presents mass murderers in denial, The End depicts a family who have hidden away in an underground bunker for 25 years. Due to an environmental disaster, Earth has become uninhabitable, and the father (Michael Shannon), an oil tycoon, knows he’s partly responsible. Meanwhile, the mother (Tilda Swinton) croons melodies to distract herself from reality.
MacKay’s role is as the 20-year-old son – well, 20 according to Oppenheimer, and 22 if you ask MacKay – who was born in the bunker and fed fibs by his parents. “I had to work out what the son innately knows to be true or straight-up lies,” says MacKay. “He’s learned the behavioural mechanisms that will soothe his parents through their guilt.” Only able to fantasise about romantic relationships, MacKay’s unnamed loner is electrified when a woman breaks into the bunker – a Black refugee played by Moses Ingram.
“In its initial concept, their relationship was entirely romantic and almost fairytale-like,” says MacKay. “But at the time of filming, racism all around the world, particularly in America, was being scrutinised. It changed the dynamic between these two characters. We were going to work, reading the news that morning, and then suddenly there’s an unlikely romance between a young white man and a Black woman who has been held at gunpoint by his family – it can no longer be that simple. The ramifications of those images, especially in the current climate, are so potent. You’ve got be really careful with that. It added depth to the characters’ understanding of the situation, as well as ours as makers of that story.”
If our curiosity is just fed with something that’s palatable to what we already like, it narrows our imagination
Born in London, MacKay landed a supporting role, aged 11, in 2003’s Peter Pan as a Lost Boy. His breakthrough year was arguably 2013, in which he starred in Sunshine on Leith, For Those in Peril, and How I Live Now. However, it’s the films and performances after that are more fondly remembered: crowd-pleasers like Pride and Captain Fantastic; donning a dress in True History of the Kelly Gang; going through hell-ish long takes for 1917. Have his reasons for acting changed? “I’m just more selective now,” he says. “At 18, I was hungry to do everything. Now I’m trying to be focused, while there’s the opportunity to be focused, in the choices that I make.”
MacKay is now married with two children, marking a stark contrast to The End where he’s the epitome of a child living at home. Referring indirectly to his family life, he comments, “With The Beast and The End, it’s about looking at the ramifications of our actions now, and what happens in the future. As you get older, you’re aware that you’re responsible for those in your immediate circle. I didn’t think about things in the same way when I was just on my own.”
Already used to challenging films under challenging conditions, MacKay was cast by Bertrand Bonello as a last-minute replacement on The Beast when Gaspard Ulliel died aged 37 in a skiing accident. Ulliel’s tragic passing was in January 2022; in August 2022, MacKay was in Paris, speaking French with Léa Seydoux, having learned his lines phonetically. When I saw The Beast at the London Film Festival, MacKay thanked his high-school French teacher, who was sat in the audience, for coaching him.
As The End was shot after The Beast, a film divided into three timelines, it’s possible to view Oppenheimer’s musical as a fourth section of an ongoing story, or at least a continuation of the 2014 section that depicts an adult virgin. “Thinking about them now, they both have quite a hypothetical understanding of [sex], whether it’s the Elliot Rodger-inspired version of Louis in The Beast – part of his hate comes from an assumption he’s made based on having no physical interactions with the world to dissuade him – or the son in The End who’s built fictional understandings to bolster a truth that needs to be true within the house.”
MacKay wasn’t expecting to discuss his next three films other than plans to release them in 2025 and 2026, so he’s hesitant to suggest their overlapping themes. Mission is a reunion with Paul Wright, the director of For Those in Peril, which MacKay calls a “profound, personal experience”; Rose of Nevada is a time-travel drama from Mark Jenkin; and & Sons sees MacKay co-starring with Bill Nighy, who left him “blown away”.
I ask if MacKay, after his flurry of arthouse projects, has felt pressure to do a tentpole movie, just like Robert Pattinson signed up to esoteric, auteur-driven fare only to later do The Batman. “No, no, no,” he says. “I’m so supported by my agents. I’m lucky to do the projects that excite me. Also, Robert Pattinson is someone I really respect. I love his Batman, and he’s fucking good in Mickey 17. He’s made amazing choices.”
The promotion sometimes costs more than the films themselves. Original visions are less commercially viable because they’re untested. They’re original, and therefore they’re not a safe bet
Ultimately, MacKay just wants to push himself and take on difficult roles, whether that refers to the shoot, the preparation, or the character’s lack of traditional likeability. He claims not to read reviews but that he can sense which films connect with viewers, and which ones don’t. Often that’s because films like The Beast and The End are slow-burners that benefit from word-of-mouth praise, as well as traditional support from journalists.
“The promotion of films is a bigger conversation,” says MacKay. “The promotion sometimes costs more than the films themselves. Original visions are less commercially viable because they’re untested. They’re original, and therefore they’re not a safe bet, which is understandable in a business sense. That’s why it’s so wonderful they can be bolstered by publications like Dazed, and having people supporting them. It teaches people that originality is a good thing. It makes people brave in the stuff they make.”
The End is out in UK cinemas on March 28
