William H. Macy is no stranger to the elements: In Fargo, he braved freezing snowfall as Jerry Lundegaard; his “Quiz Kid” Donnie Smith sought shelter from a frog-drenched rainstorm in Magnolia; as Frank Gallagher in Shameless, he embraced a different kind of force of nature as he looked after a brood of unruly children across 11 seasons. So when the forest-set Train Dreams came his way, he felt right at home. “I got the script in the morning. I try to read scripts fast. This one, I think I read it the morning it came in, and it was love at first sight. I was smitten,” he remembers. “I do a lot of independent films and I had a lot of work around that time and they were jammed in rather tightly, but I said, ‘I’m doing it.’ And that was it. I mean, instantaneous decision and I never looked back.” 

In the moving drama Train Dreams, Macy lends his signature humanity to Arn Peeples, a logger in the Pacific Northwest during the early 20th century, whose way of seeing and embracing the living world leaves a lasting impression on fellow laborer Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) and reverberates through what Macy calls the “delicious melancholia” of the film long after the character leaves the screen. “He’s complicated, which I love. He’s funny, which I adore. He’s got a great name, Arn Peeples,” says the Academy Award–nominated actor. “How can you say no to playing Arn Peeples?” But that’s not the only thing that the performer couldn’t pass up: like Arn, Macy has an affinity for woodworking. “He loved the trees. And I love trees. I’m a bit of a carpenter. I turn bowls on a lathe, wooden bowls, so I collect all kinds of wood,” he says. 

“I've been such a fan of William H. Macy’s for so long,” says Train Dreams director Clint Bentley of the actor. “I grew up watching his movies, and was a bit nervous to work with him, just because of being such a fan, and he was so generous and so kind.” Bentley, along with co-writer Greg Kwedar, adapted the script from Denis Johnson’s novella of the same name. “Arn Peeples is a character who, even in the book, is just kind of larger than life. It’s a character that’s hard for an actor to maybe step into and make their own,” Bentley says. “Bill brought Arn to life in such an indelible way, and brought so much nuance to that character. He was just such a kind and generous and a brilliant actor to work with.”

Macy relished working with Bentley, a fellow Oscar nominee for co-writing Sing Sing with Kwedar, and the thoughtful yet joyous atmosphere the filmmaker cultivated. “The feeling on the set that Clint engendered was, it was a happy set. It was a contemplative set. He is not afraid to talk about the scenes and what they mean and what’s going on in them,” recalls the performer. “When the scene was over, he let the camera roll and he said, ‘Keep going.’ And I wasn’t raised that way. I was raised onstage where ad-libbing is a criminal act at worst and boring at best. You just don’t ad-lib in the theater. But the scene would roll on, and we just kept going. And I was having the time of my life.”

This feature originally appeared in Issue 22 of Tudum Magazine.