William H. Macy, the consummate character actor, has been giving standout performances for 50 years — in films such as Fargo, Boogie Nights and Pleasantville; TV programs including ER, Door to Door and Shameless; and plays written by David Mamet. Earlier this month, the 75-year-old sat down with The Hollywood Reporter in front of an audience at the Access Canada Summit in Toronto to reflect on his life, career and why he was “swept away” by Train Dreams, the new film in which he stars, which was about to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Train Dreams was adapted, from Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name, by the Oscar-nominated team behind Jockey and Sing Sing, Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar. Under the direction of Bentley, it stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a railroad worker and logger in the Pacific Northwest in the early decades of the 20th century. Macy plays Arn Peeples, a man Grainier encounters several times along the way, who, in addition to being an explosives specialist with a great name, is also a philosopher, singer and all-around character.
Macy — a two-time Emmy and four-time SAG award winner and an Oscar nominee who has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “chameleonic,” by the New York Times as “dizzyingly versatile” and by The Guardian as someone whose “name on a movie has been one of those reassuring elements that tend to suggest the movie in question might actually be worth watching … a badge of quality” — doesn’t have much screen time in Train Dreams, but he makes every second that he does have count. And the film serves as a reminder, after a decade of Macy being largely absent from the big screen, of what makes him so special — and a best supporting actor Oscar contender this season.
Netflix will release Train Dreams in theaters on Nov. 7 and on its streaming platform on Nov. 21.
