Kelly Macdonald made her debut as Diane, Mark Renton's underage love interest, in the popular film "Trainspotting" (1996). As the only female lead in the movie, a uncompromising and precocious teenager, the slight, brown-haired actress gave a breakthrough performance, impressing both critics and moviegoers. A most auspicious debut, "Trainspotting" insured that her face would not be forgotten, her image prominent on the film poster that was plastered throughout England and the USA. That same year, Macdonald starred in the title role in the affecting drama "Stella Does Tricks", playing a young prostitute in Scotland looking to break away from the trade. She certainly proved one to watch with her compelling turn as Stella, impressing the film's unfortunately limited audience with her heartbreaking performance as the spunky heroine. In "Cousin Bette" (1998), the actress was cast as the superficially sweet but ultimately tragic Hortense Hulot, Bette's romantic competition, in the adaptation of Honore de Balzac's acclaimed novel. Dressed in period costume with perfect blonde curls and mannered speech unlike her native Scottish tones, Macdonald was barely recognizable from her earlier work. But she more than held her own in a cast that included Jessica Lange, Geraldine Chaplin and Elizabeth Shue.

Also in 1998, the actress was featured in a smaller role in another period piece "Elizabeth", as the mistress of the monarch's rival. 1999 saw the release of "The Loss of Sexual Innocence", which teamed her with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Julian Sands and "My Life So Far", a Scottish production with Colin Firth and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The up and coming actress also lensed Phil Joanou's autobiographical "Entropy" (1999) and had a colorful supporting role in Gregg Araki's "Splendor" (1999). After a small role in the humorous drama “My Life So Far” (1999), she had a larger part in Mike Figgis’ “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” (1999), a non-linear film about the sexual awakening of a young Kenyan man. In “Two Family House” (2000), she was a very pregnant young Irish woman who lives in a two-story home with her husband (Kevin Conway). Both become unwanted tenants when a frustrated factory worker (Michael Rispoli) buys the house with dreams of turning the downstairs into a neighborhood bar.

A supporting part in “Some Voices” (2000), an amusing drama about a schizophrenic adjusting to the outside world, was followed by a starring role in “House!” (2000) in which she played a clairvoyant bingo caller who must decide whether or not to use her psychic abilities to save her soon-to-be out of business employer. She next appeared in the romantic comedy-of-errors “Strictly Sinatra” (2001), playing the girlfriend of a wanna-be crooner in love with Frank Sinatra’s music who teams up with a local gang of thugs in order to make it big. MacDonald then gained widespread recognition and acclaim for her next film, “Gosford Park” (2001), director Robert Altman’s satirical upstairs-downstairs murder mystery where the lord of an English manor (Michael Gambon) is murdered by one of his weekend guests, or one of their servants, many of whom had plenty of reason to kill him.

MacDonald segued to the small screen with “State of Play” (BBC America, 2003), a crime thriller about a rising member of Parliament (David Morrissey) drawn into a spiral of lies and deceit after a research assistant accidentally dies in an underground station. She played the associate of a journalist (John Simm) who begins to piece together the mystery of what happened. After the made-for-CBS movie “Brush With Fate” (2003), MacDonald returned to features with “Intermission” (2004), an absurd and violent crime thriller about more than a dozen Dubliners brought together by a petty thief’s plan to rob a bank. Following an appearance on an episode of “Alias” (ABC, 2001- ), she played the fictional Peter Pan in “Finding Neverland” (2004), the story of playwright J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his relationship with four fatherless boys and their mother (Kate Winslet).

Despite a long and extensive resume, MacDonald had yet to really make a name for herself. That began to change with a starring role in “The Girl in the Café” (HBO, 2005), in which she played a mysterious woman who meets a shy civil servant (Bill Nighy) and is brought by him to the G8 Summit in Iceland where both are thrown into an emotional conflict between personal conviction and professional obligation. MacDonald earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television.