Christian McKay (l) excels as Orson Welles in Richard Linklater's new film. Zac Efron as "me"? Not so much.

The accent is unmistakably English. British thespian Christian McKay is in Louisville, Kentucky, on a promotional tour for his new film, Me and Orson Welles. It’s not just his new film, though — it’s the first and only one for the 36-year-old McKay.

“This is it, this is my first film… it may be my last film,” he quips. “It was one of those marvelous, being in the right place at the right time [scenarios]. I never thought that would happen to me, but it did.”

McKay had previously played Welles in a popular one-man show in his native England, which he reluctantly agreed to revive for a 16-night run in New York City. On the final night, director Richard Linklater showed up to check out his performance. “I stood there like an imbecile and gave him the names of famous Hollywood stars who could play the role, thinking, you know, not even in my wild imagination, which is pretty wild, that there’s no way he can cast an unknown limey as this great American icon,” McKay recalls. “No way.”

Linklater disagreed, and watching Me and Orson Welles, it’s hard to imagine it any other way. Far beyond the physical resemblance, McKay’s embodiment of the young, pre-obesity Welles is uncanny, riveting and entirely three-dimensional. Perhaps not since Peter O’Toole’s role as Lawrence of Arabia has a movie so heavily rested on the shoulders of an unknown actor from the British Isles. McKay manages to nail every aspect of the legendarily difficult genius, including, of course, his powerful, unmistakable voice.

“Impression or imitation would have been absolute death,” admits McKay. He realized immediately and intuitively that he would have to dig deep to fill Welles’s ample trousers. Then there was the additional challenge of portraying a larger-than-life character with the inherent subtleties required for the big screen.

“Richard said, ‘You can play the larger-than-life character and you can boom and you can scream, but you need to learn how to do it within the shot, so that the camera can find you absolutely within the moment and find the truth and the embodiment,’” McKay explains. “So I thought that was a very interesting thing; no imitation, no impression, just me to reference, to become him. I knew I had to find my Orson. So, I’d come in, in the morning, take the old man out of the suitcase and become him.”

McKay and Linklater’s Orson is proving to be a big hit with the critics. His performance was recently nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for best supporting male. Previous winners include Steve Buscemi, Benicio Del Toro, Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe. In truth, McKay’s star outshines the entire movie and he dwarfs his more famous co-star Zac Efron, who plays the part of Richard (the “Me” in the film’s title).

McKay’s Wikipedia entry is currently a mere stub and he claims that, until very recently, he didn’t have an agent. He admits, however, that the film has opened up a lot of possibilities for his now-burgeoning career. “Somebody said to me the other day, ‘This will change your life,’ and I honestly replied, ‘I don’t want it to,’” he says. “I have a lovely life. I’m really enjoying the ride. I don’t expect anything of it.”