Alexey Vronsky Kevin McKidd Alexey Vronsky is an aristocrat, a soldier, and a charmer with good looks that his comrades envy. In the midst of wooing Kitty, he falls in love with Anna Karenina and pursues a love affair with her that ultimately destroys them both. When Kevin McKidd first read the script of Anna Karenina, he knew he could not play Vronsky as a straight romantic lead. "I'm not an actor who's interested in making good, clean characters who are meant to be perfect human beings. I find it embarrassing. And it's patronizing to the audience when filmmakers decide that people who are deeply in love have to be beautiful. People will just switch off because they think, 'Wait a minute. I'm just a normal person, and I feel things deeply, so why do they have to be beautiful on screen before they're allowed to be passionate?'" For all his insistence on realism, McKidd has no problem with the idea of love at first sight. "The minute Vronsky and Anna meet, their affair is inevitable. I met my wife that way at a party and I just knew my whole life had changed. These things don't just happen in books." McKidd's film credits include roles as the tragic gentle giant Tommy in Trainspotting (1996) and as Durward Lely in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy (1999).