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Kate Dickie (born in 1971 in East Kilbride, Scotland) is a five times award-winning Scottish actress who has appeared in TV-series, stage plays and movies. She is best-known for her portrayal as the security camera operative Jackie in her film debut “Red Road”, directed by Andrea Arnold, and for which she was given several awards as best actress, among other things at the BAFTA Scotland Awards and the British Independent Film Awards in 2006. Dickie also supports the theatre company Solar Bear, which is known for its collaborations with deaf people, in part in her role as the patron.

Biography
Early Life	 Dickie was born in Kilbride but spent part of her childhood in different cities (Dumfries, Galloway, Perthshire and Ayreshire) due to frequent removals of her family. From an early age she discovered her passion for acting which her parents also supported. But coming from a working-class family (her father was a farmer and gardener) in which none family member had been in the arts before, she was embarrassed to call herself an actress since she was afraid to be named as pretentious. Her desire for drama classes supported her to overcome her insecurities that appeared through the frequent school changes and helped her dealing with adjusting to new people and surroundings. After leaving school she went to college in Kirkcaldy to study for a national certificate in drama. In 1990, she won a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and decided to stay in Glasgow. Dickie started to work in theatre and had the opportunity to perform with some of Scotland´s best companies. She finally achieved her breakthrough in 2000 when she played a role in an episode of the BBC Scotland series “Tinsel Town”.

Acting Career

Through Kate´s performance in her film debut “Red Road”, in which she plays a security camera operative who gets involved with people´s everyday life through her camera perspective and who begins to stalk a man for reasons relating to her past, with her former drama school mate and co-star Tony Curran, she now gains more recognition as a serious actress. Dickie received several positive critics concerning her “astonishing acting” as the protagonist Jackie as she presents the character in all her complexes by “displaying a cold, brittle exterior that occasionally cracks to reveal both pain and passion in equal measure”(View London, Matthew Turner, 20/10/2006). Unfortunately, she is not yet world-wide known and her “lead performance” might “be understated”, but relating to her acting performance she is still seen as “excellent”(M&C, Ron Wilkinson, 10/04/2007) as she does not necessarily need a great amount of text. She is fully able to use her “expressive face” for “emoting every nuance” of the character´s feelings (BBC, Jamie Russel, 22/10/2006). Her acting abilities are also noticed by Shane Meadow, a famous film director and screenwriter of the UK´s independent film scene, and his producer Marc Herbert, who both praise her willingness to play provoking and complex scenes for the sake of the story including her ability to put honesty and real emotions in her acting that let her stand out against other actresses in the UK. Her performance as an introverted person and the intensive depicting of the explicit sexual scene in “Red Road” shows her talent and courage as an actress, who does not hesitate playing controversial film scenes and who is also able to display deep emotional feelings. A further work that emphasizes her choice of playing complex characters is the stage play “Aalst”, which is based on the true story of a couple who had killed their children and get sentenced in a trial that caused a great deal of attention. Dickie plays one of the parents who commited the murder. Her ambition to perform this role was her feeling of “responsibility to play people like that and to give them a voice. People that are not necessarily good or nice and have good lives.” Kate currently works on a new film named “Rounding Up Donkeys”– a follow-up of “Red Road”, which is also directed by Andrea Arnold.

Private Life

Kate lives with her daughter Molly (born in 2001) and her partner Kenny, a sound technician, in Kelvinbridge.

Awards and Nomination
BAFTA Awards, Scotland

British Independent Film Awards

Chlotrudis Awards London Critics Circle Film Awards

Montréal Festival of New Cinema