Wilton Cartagena, who runs a grocery store on Coney Island, is relieved that a new ferry service connecting the remote beachfront community to Manhattan will cut the four-hour commute for his employees, most of whom live in the Bronx.

He anticipates that the ferries will also bring an economic boon to its shores, which are best known for an amusement park but tethered to a limited summer season. "Coney Island has been very neglected for a long time, so this is going to be good for business," said Cartagena, who owns J-R Market near the anticipated pier.

Except that what is good for business may be coming at the expense of Brooklyn's last remaining creek and the wildlife that live there. Scientists for the city's Parks Department, which oversees Coney Island Creek Park, say city officials pushed ahead with the plan to build the ferry landing on the creek despite concerns that a service there would damage the ecosystem and release toxic pollution.

The Coney Island Creek — popular among bird-watchers, fishermen, schoolchildren and even those who perform baptisms — attracts nearly 250 bird species, some of them rarities such as the white-winged dove and the thick-billed murre that fly all the way from the Arctic. The creek bottom is filled with horseshoe crabs, a major food source for the birds.

Construction of the pier and waves caused by the ferries will probably disrupt the habitat for the crabs that are dependent on quiet waters, scientists say, toppling the entire food chain and erasing a precious wildlife sanctuary in New York City.

The new ferry line, which is expected to cut the daily slog to Manhattan by half an hour, is part of outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s flagship initiative to connect the five boroughs via water, and is tied to redevelopment efforts on Coney Island.

Concerns about the environmental impact flared up almost immediately after the city issued a feasibility study in 2018, offering as options two locations: one to the east and the other to the west of the narrow waterway that connects the creek with Gravesend Bay. The city initially did not consider a Coney Island service for the ferry project, and only started looking into it seriously three years ago.

The Economic Development Corporation, a semi-independent city agency in charge of the project, ultimately settled on the location to the west, just across Kaiser Park, saying it had more water depth and was less exposed to adverse weather.

But in recent weeks, local residents have stepped up their opposition to having the pier on the waterway, after they learned that scientists within the Parks Department had cautioned against the selection.

They have questioned whether there was pressure to rush the ferry service to meet de Blasio’s goal for a robust ferry system before his term ends and to support the luxury condominiums being built there by John Catsimatidis, a billionaire developer who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying the city over the past three years to build a ferry stop on Coney Island.

A lobbying firm hired by Catsimatidis pushed officials for a stop on Coney Island as well as funding for a shuttle service from the ferry landing to the beachfront, where Catsimatidis’ condos and the amusement park stand.

Catsimatidis, in an interview, confirmed that sales of condo units hinged on an operational ferry service. He has already constructed two buildings as part of his Ocean Drive complex, and even though it was yet to be completed, ads were placed in newspapers with the catch: “Ferry to Manhattan Coming Soon!”

“As far as we’re concerned, we built two beautiful buildings and we spent $400 million,” he said. “You know, that’s a lot of money.” He used an expletive to describe the environmental concerns.

Although the ferry service is set to begin within weeks, residents are still asking the city to slow down.

Besides the effects on the wildlife, there are fears that dredging during construction and the shaking of waters by high-speed ferries would release carcinogens such as mercury, lead and dioxins trapped in the creek bed. The area sits across Calvert Vaux Park, a former industrial dump site, and toxins released in the air and water could affect nearby residents, many of whom live in affordable housing, scientists and environmentalists familiar with the area said.

Last month, video footage showed a subcontractor dredging the creek bed without following stringent protocols used to prevent contaminants from being stirred up. The city Economic Development Corporation responded by firing the subcontractor, saying in an email it had not followed rules properly.

Ann Valdez, 55, who lives in a public-housing complex right across the creek, started having breathing problems over the past couple of months, and her doctor prescribed her a nebulizer. She worried that her breathing would get worse when the ferries stir up toxins from the creek bed.

“People are going to get sick. I have children, grandchildren, and I wouldn’t want them to have to be exposed to that,” she said, adding, “The one thought in my mind is — environmentally, it’s crazy.”

The ferry service wouldn’t necessarily relieve commutes for residents like her either, she said, because she would have to pay extra for the ferry ride to lower Manhattan on top of the subway ride from Pier 11, which is a few blocks away from the nearest station. A one-way ticket on the ferry would cost $2.75, the same amount for a single ride on the subway.

“It makes no sense whatsoever because in reality, they’re not trying to make traveling for us, the average person here, any better because the average person still would have to take other transportation to continue their ride,” she said.

Several scientists employed by NYC Parks told The New York Times that they had provided their superiors extensive data showing the negative impacts of operating a ferry service from Coney Island Creek, including the disruption to the birds and horseshoe crabs.

Crabs depend on quiet waters, and because the shoreline is not armored — meaning it cannot withstand boat waves — wake impacts and dredging during construction would lead to lower sand content, reducing shoreline habitat used by aquatic organisms.

The scientists said their comments were not reflected in a key report sent to regulators to help determine whether to issue a permit, and instead the document said the opposite — that there would be no significant environmental impact.

“We do not see how it was concluded that there will be no significant impacts from expanding ferry service to Coney Island Creek,” the parks scientists wrote to their superiors. “The criteria for such a determination were not set out and were never provided.”

Anessa Hodgson, a parks spokesperson, said the environmental impact statement went through several rounds of review by experts across the agency and also considered public comment. The Parks Department, she added, came to the “ultimate concurrence with the conclusions” outlined in the development agency’s final statement.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation said it follows its own process for approving projects, but that much of its assessment is based on statements provided by the applicant itself — in this case, the Economic Development Corporation. (The conservation scientists themselves do not inspect a site.)

The Army Corps of Engineers, a separate regulator that primarily looks at dredging and in-water construction activities, also concluded that there would not be a significant ecological impact and issued a permit.

In an email, the Economic Development Corporation said it took environmental concerns seriously and that construction would not have proceeded without full approval by the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Still, critics questioned the process and said that had the Parks Department aligned with its own scientists, regulators may have taken more time to assess the situation before issuing the permit. But that could mean delaying the launch of the ferry service to a later date — probably not during de Blasio’s tenure, which ends Dec. 31.

A former Economic Development Corporation official involved in the project said that despite the agency being technically independent, pushing back against the mayor’s wishes was virtually impossible.

“If Parks said that there are impacts, this can add significant cost to the project and results in a lot of arguing back and forth about what should be done, where and how,” said Ida Sanoff, executive director of the Natural Resources Protective Association.

Many residents want the ferry service and are hopeful that it would bring a much-needed boost to the local economy. Businesses are hoping it will make the seasonally operated amusement park open year-round.

The ferry at Coney Island Creek also means bringing more people to the side of Coney Island, opposite from the beach and amusement district, where they normally would not venture.

Assemblywoman Mathylde Frontus, whose district includes Coney Island and who has been leading the opposition to the Coney Island Creek location, said she wanted a ferry service too — but not at any cost.

“We would be thrilled and do backflips if we have a ferry in Coney Island, so we want it done properly,” she said.

“If we’re not ready now, we should in fact wait a little longer. Our health is so important that it’s much more important to have it done the right way than any old way.”

Wilton Cartagena, who runs a grocery store on Coney Island, is relieved that a new ferry service connecting the remote beachfront community to Manhattan will cut the four-hour commute for his employees, most of whom live in the Bronx.

Wilton Cartagena, who runs a grocery store on Coney Island, is relieved that a new ferry service connecting the remote beachfront community to Manhattan will cut the four-hour commute for his employees, most of whom live in the Bronx. He anticipates that the ferries will also bring an economic boon to its shores, which are best known for an amusement park but tethered to a limited summer season. "Coney Island has been very neglected for a long time, so this is going to be good for business," said Cartagena, who owns J-R Market near the anticipated pier. Except that what is good for business may be coming at the expense of Brooklyn's last remaining creek and the wildlife that live there. Scientists for the city's Parks Department, which oversees Coney Island Creek Park, say city officials pushed ahead with the plan to build the ferry landing on the creek despite concerns that a service there would damage the ecosystem and release toxic pollution. The Coney Island Creek — popular among bird-watchers, fishermen, schoolchildren and even those who perform baptisms — attracts nearly 250 bird species, some of them rarities such as the white-winged dove and the thick-billed murre that fly all the way from the Arctic. The creek bottom is filled with horseshoe crabs, a major food source for the birds. Construction of the pier and waves caused by the ferries will probably disrupt the habitat for the crabs that are dependent on quiet waters, scientists say, toppling the entire food chain and erasing a precious wildlife sanctuary in New York City. The new ferry line, which is expected to cut the daily slog to Manhattan by half an hour, is part of outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s flagship initiative to connect the five boroughs via water, and is tied to redevelopment efforts on Coney Island. Concerns about the environmental impact flared up almost immediately after the city issued a feasibility study in 2018, offering as options two locations: one to the east and the other to the west of the narrow waterway that connects the creek with Gravesend Bay. The city initially did not consider a Coney Island service for the ferry project, and only started looking into it seriously three years ago. The Economic Development Corporation, a semi-independent city agency in charge of the project, ultimately settled on the location to the west, just across Kaiser Park, saying it had more water depth and was less exposed to adverse weather. But in recent weeks, local residents have stepped up their opposition to having the pier on the waterway, after they learned that scientists within the Parks Department had cautioned against the selection. They have questioned whether there was pressure to rush the ferry service to meet de Blasio’s goal for a robust ferry system before his term ends and to support the luxury condominiums being built there by John Catsimatidis, a billionaire developer who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying the city over the past three years to build a ferry stop on Coney Island. A lobbying firm hired by Catsimatidis pushed officials for a stop on Coney Island as well as funding for a shuttle service from the ferry landing to the beachfront, where Catsimatidis’ condos and the amusement park stand. Catsimatidis, in an interview, confirmed that sales of condo units hinged on an operational ferry service. He has already constructed two buildings as part of his Ocean Drive complex, and even though it was yet to be completed, ads were placed in newspapers with the catch: “Ferry to Manhattan Coming Soon!” “As far as we’re concerned, we built two beautiful buildings and we spent $400 million,” he said. “You know, that’s a lot of money.” He used an expletive to describe the environmental concerns. Although the ferry service is set to begin within weeks, residents are still asking the city to slow down. Besides the effects on the wildlife, there are fears that dredging during construction and the shaking of waters by high-speed ferries would release carcinogens such as mercury, lead and dioxins trapped in the creek bed. The area sits across Calvert Vaux Park, a former industrial dump site, and toxins released in the air and water could affect nearby residents, many of whom live in affordable housing, scientists and environmentalists familiar with the area said. Last month, video footage showed a subcontractor dredging the creek bed without following stringent protocols used to prevent contaminants from being stirred up. The city Economic Development Corporation responded by firing the subcontractor, saying in an email it had not followed rules properly. Ann Valdez, 55, who lives in a public-housing complex right across the creek, started having breathing problems over the past couple of months, and her doctor prescribed her a nebulizer. She worried that her breathing would get worse when the ferries stir up toxins from the creek bed. “People are going to get sick. I have children, grandchildren, and I wouldn’t want them to have to be exposed to that,” she said, adding, “The one thought in my mind is — environmentally, it’s crazy.” The ferry service wouldn’t necessarily relieve commutes for residents like her either, she said, because she would have to pay extra for the ferry ride to lower Manhattan on top of the subway ride from Pier 11, which is a few blocks away from the nearest station. A one-way ticket on the ferry would cost $2.75, the same amount for a single ride on the subway. “It makes no sense whatsoever because in reality, they’re not trying to make traveling for us, the average person here, any better because the average person still would have to take other transportation to continue their ride,” she said. Several scientists employed by NYC Parks told The New York Times that they had provided their superiors extensive data showing the negative impacts of operating a ferry service from Coney Island Creek, including the disruption to the birds and horseshoe crabs. Crabs depend on quiet waters, and because the shoreline is not armored — meaning it cannot withstand boat waves — wake impacts and dredging during construction would lead to lower sand content, reducing shoreline habitat used by aquatic organisms. The scientists said their comments were not reflected in a key report sent to regulators to help determine whether to issue a permit, and instead the document said the opposite — that there would be no significant environmental impact. “We do not see how it was concluded that there will be no significant impacts from expanding ferry service to Coney Island Creek,” the parks scientists wrote to their superiors. “The criteria for such a determination were not set out and were never provided.” Anessa Hodgson, a parks spokesperson, said the environmental impact statement went through several rounds of review by experts across the agency and also considered public comment. The Parks Department, she added, came to the “ultimate concurrence with the conclusions” outlined in the development agency’s final statement. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said it follows its own process for approving projects, but that much of its assessment is based on statements provided by the applicant itself — in this case, the Economic Development Corporation. (The conservation scientists themselves do not inspect a site.) The Army Corps of Engineers, a separate regulator that primarily looks at dredging and in-water construction activities, also concluded that there would not be a significant ecological impact and issued a permit. In an email, the Economic Development Corporation said it took environmental concerns seriously and that construction would not have proceeded without full approval by the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Army Corps of Engineers. Still, critics questioned the process and said that had the Parks Department aligned with its own scientists, regulators may have taken more time to assess the situation before issuing the permit. But that could mean delaying the launch of the ferry service to a later date — probably not during de Blasio’s tenure, which ends Dec. 31. A former Economic Development Corporation official involved in the project said that despite the agency being technically independent, pushing back against the mayor’s wishes was virtually impossible. “If Parks said that there are impacts, this can add significant cost to the project and results in a lot of arguing back and forth about what should be done, where and how,” said Ida Sanoff, executive director of the Natural Resources Protective Association. Many residents want the ferry service and are hopeful that it would bring a much-needed boost to the local economy. Businesses are hoping it will make the seasonally operated amusement park open year-round. The ferry at Coney Island Creek also means bringing more people to the side of Coney Island, opposite from the beach and amusement district, where they normally would not venture. Assemblywoman Mathylde Frontus, whose district includes Coney Island and who has been leading the opposition to the Coney Island Creek location, said she wanted a ferry service too — but not at any cost. “We would be thrilled and do backflips if we have a ferry in Coney Island, so we want it done properly,” she said. “If we’re not ready now, we should in fact wait a little longer. Our health is so important that it’s much more important to have it done the right way than any old way.”

A ferry is coming to coney island. Here’s why some residents are angry.

It was a February day so overcast that noon looked like dusk, and Frances McDormand felt a little rattled. She told me this as we ambled down the main street of the small coastal town where she lives, a modest, hidden place so far from Hollywood that studio searchlights would have a hard time finding it. Still, someone had managed.

Earlier that day, the phone rang at McDormand’s house, and while she didn’t recognize the man on the other end, he certainly knew who &lt;em&gt;she &lt;/em&gt;was. When the caller told her he was watching “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the 2017 movie in which she plays an avenging mother named Mildred, McDormand realized she was on the phone with a fan who had tracked down her unlisted landline.

“It was the first creepy call I’ve gotten in 16 years here,” she told me. Though she hung up right away, McDormand now wondered what she might have asked him: “OK, what part were you watching? The scene where I threw the Molotov cocktail at the police station?”

Maybe the fan had hoped to speak with righteous Mildred, who harangues priests and cops and hurls fire bombs in the pursuit of justice. Instead, he reached Frances McDormand, a 63-year-old woman who chats up everybody she comes across in her small town, doesn’t like to think of herself as famous, and has won two Oscars.

This is the tricky thing about how persuasively McDormand embodies her characters: You think you know&lt;em&gt; her&lt;/em&gt; because you’re certain you know them. Whether it’s kindhearted Marge from “Fargo,” tetchy Olive from “Olive Kitteridge,” or bohemian Jane in “Laurel Canyon,” McDormand specializes in playing women with worldviews. You can tell right away what they like and don’t like, who they would be friendly with and who they can’t stand.

Since she rarely grants interviews, most people only see the real McDormand blazing an iconoclastic streak through televised awards shows, where she is barefaced instead of Botoxed and once wore her own jean jacket in lieu of borrowed couture. (In Hollywood, this mild noncompliance is tantamount to a declaration of war.) McDormand is highly skeptical of any ceremony where actors are done up like glamorous gladiators, and when her husband, filmmaker Joel Coen, was once asked to produce the Oscars alongside his brother, Ethan, McDormand suggested they set the telecast at Coney Island, which would have forced Hollywood glitterati to mingle with the freak show.

That irreverence is McDormand’s most endearing trait: On the day we met, she ducked into a liquor store to satisfy her craving for Fritos — “You know they’re gooood, right?” she teased — and before we sat together on a concrete wall by the coastline, McDormand clambered on top of it and used the length of her splayed body to measure a pandemic-appropriate distance between us. She makes a concerted effort not to treat herself like a precious movie star in the hopes that you won’t, either.

That’s why she lives where she lives and why, as she perched on the wall opposite me in an olive puffer jacket, she asked me not to divulge the name of her town. That morning’s phone call aside, “I get to live my more authentic self here,” she said, “and I don’t have to pretend to be anybody else.”

She nodded toward the beach, where a handful of people cavorted with their dogs and surfboards. “I don’t mind being&lt;em&gt; their&lt;/em&gt; movie star,” she said. “I’m just not going to be yours.”

STILL, THE LINE BETWEEN McDORMAND and her characters will only grow blurrier with the release of her intimate new film, “Nomadland.” In this sunset-dappled drama from the director Chloé Zhao, McDormand plays Fern, a widow who packs her things into a van and joins up with a tribe of older itinerant workers to spend their golden years working odd jobs all across the American West.

“Nomadland” would eventually require more from this private star than she is used to giving, but when McDormand first met with Zhao in early 2018, she was mostly curious what the up-and-coming director would think of her: “I was like, ‘Man, I just want to be relevant. Do you think I’m relevant?’”

Perhaps that’s a surprising admission for a woman who was then on the verge of winning her second Oscar, for “Three Billboards,” but McDormand had just entered her 60s and worried that good opportunities could prove harder to find. Even before that, most of her best-known roles had required some hustle to obtain, which is part of the reason McDormand has lately become a producer, too.

“Our industry is such an ageist industry,” Zhao told me by phone. “Someone like Frances McDormand who is just so authentically herself, who has not tried to erase those lines on her face or cover that up to fit into the industry — to me, she’ll be relevant forever.”

And it was exactly that authentic self that intrigued Zhao. In her previous films, “The Rider” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” Zhao had cast nonprofessionals and built character arcs for them that were inspired by their actual experiences. “Nomadland,” based on a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, would offer her the same opportunity: Real nomads from Bruder’s book, like Linda May and Swankie, were enticed to play pivotal supporting roles in the film.

But since Zhao wanted those women to simply be themselves in front of the camera, she decided that for the sake of coherence, McDormand would need to play a version of herself, too. “It’s very interesting, the layers of it,” Zhao said. “Fran is playing Fern, but even the name ‘Fern’ came from herself and who she thinks she might be if she hit the road.”

In fact, McDormand had long harbored a fantasy of turning her back on Hollywood, changing her name, and setting off in an RV upon reaching her 60s. “Chloé tapped into the truth of it,” McDormand said, “which was at different points of my life, I’ve said to my husband, ‘I can’t take this anymore, I’m dropping out.’”

“Nomadland” let McDormand play out that dream and a few others. Many of the people McDormand interacts with in the film had no idea she was a famous actress — they figured she was just another nomad, and spoke to her like a normal person in exactly the way that she craves.

In some ways, all that verisimilitude could be grueling, too — McDormand was surprised at how exhausted she would feel after long days of simply being present in front of the camera, reacting to the stories real people unspooled. Zhao also asked McDormand to put in actual hours at Fern’s odd jobs, like harvesting beets in Nebraska or working at a warehouse in California.

But the result is a performance that McDormand has never given before, one that has less to do with acting and more to do with simply &lt;em&gt;being&lt;/em&gt;. As Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wrote in his “Nomadland” review, “McDormand doesn’t disappear into Fern; she’s revealed by Fern, and Fern is revealed by her.”

That sort of ineffable, hard-to-pin-down portrait was exactly Zhao’s intention. “I like to think that we have captured a great performance,” she said, “but also, an essence of Fran as well.”

Still, the director and her star sometimes disagreed on just how much of that essence to use. Details both large and small have been pulled directly from McDormand’s real life: Fern proudly shows off a set of plates that McDormand’s father bought her as a college graduation gift, and Zhao cast one of the actress’s oldest friends as Fern’s sister so the recriminations they air in the film could have a real weight.

But when Zhao floated the idea of finding a role in the film for McDormand’s son, Pedro, or suggested that Fern’s dead spouse, glimpsed only in a photograph, should be played by McDormand’s actual husband, Joel Coen, her lead drew a line in the sand. “I have to believe that it’s not just a documentary of me,” McDormand said. “I did create a character, just like I’ve created myself in 63 years, too.”

FOR MOST OF HER LIFE, McDormand has been fascinated by the formula through which one concocts a self-image. How much does it have to do with authenticity, and to what extent is it constructed by playing pretend?

“I would say probably fifth grade is the first time I can remember, ‘Oh, I know what they think I am, and I’m going to subvert it,’” she told me.

What they knew about McDormand then was that she was the adopted daughter of Vernon McDormand, a minister for the Disciples of Christ. That sort of role in that sort of family required a certain amount of public respectability, but as she got older, and an English teacher at McDormand’s school in Monessen, Pennsylvania, asked her to read the role of Lady Macbeth in a workshop, she found herself thrilled to leave propriety at the door.

“That was the hook,” McDormand said. “It was the power of being a really shy, slightly suspect seventh-grader who could stand in front of a group of people and keep their attention.” She loved, too, that Shakespeare’s female characters were as power-hungry as the men: “It’s like I used to say to Joel, ‘Why don’t you guys write better roles for women? In fact, why don’t you just write a role for men and then let me play it?’”

She had married Coen not long after making her screen debut in the 1984 noir “Blood Simple,” which he directed with Ethan. Twelve years later, the Coen brothers would give McDormand her signature role, one that could only be played by a woman: Marge, the chirpy, pregnant police chief in “Fargo.”

That film made her famous, a condition that McDormand considered a fire to be stomped out: After hiring a publicist, she almost immediately instructed him to turn down most requests.

“I made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for 10 years in what other people would think would be a very dangerous moment in a female actor’s career, but it paid off for exactly the reasons I wanted it to,” she said. “It gave me a mystery back to who I was, and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.”

To her, “Nomadland” is the culmination of that effort to keep herself unspoiled in the public eye. “That’s why it works,” she said. “That’s why Chloé could bear to even think of doing this with me, because of what I’ve created for years not just as an actor, but in my personal life.”

We traipsed back through town, and as we walked up a hill covered in overgrowth and eucalyptus trees, McDormand drew one final line: “So I’m going to pass my house, and then I’m going to leave you,” she said. She asked if I had dinner plans, and directed me to a farm stand I could stop by on the way home. “They’ve got gorgeous little gems and some good old arugula,” she said, “but no eggs right now because the chickens are all cold.”

As McDormand offered me kindly advice while standing in front of a felled eucalyptus trunk, I could have sworn I was talking to Fern, who is so practical and self-reliant. It reminded me of a story she had told me earlier: Not long ago, for the drive-in premiere of “Nomadland” in Pasadena, California, McDormand had decided to pull the van from the film out of storage. She thought it would be fun to sit in during the screening, but when she came face to face with the car she had lovingly named “Vanguard,” McDormand found herself overcome.

She had considered that van “the interior life of Fern, and therefore me,” she said, and to see Vanguard dirty and filled with junk after two years apart was almost too much to bear. An hour and a half into their reunion, Coen found McDormand still scrubbing the car, dripping sweat, insisting that she needed just a little more time with Vanguard. “I’m cleaning her,” McDormand told him. “I can’t let her go!”

It isn’t easy to move on when you’ve made something that requires so much of you. Before we parted ways, I asked McDormand how she felt after making “Nomadland.” I thought she scoffed at me, but she was laughing at the very idea.

“Well, at what point?” she said. “&lt;em&gt;Is&lt;/em&gt; it afterwards? I don’t know!” Then she shoved her hands into the pockets of her puffer jacket and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove, taking Fern with her.

It was a February day so overcast that noon looked like dusk, and Frances McDormand felt a little rattled. She told me this as we ambled down the main street of the small coastal town where she lives, a modest, hidden place so far from Hollywood that studio searchlights would have a hard time finding it.

It was a February day so overcast that noon looked like dusk, and Frances McDormand felt a little rattled. She told me this as we ambled down the main street of the small coastal town where she lives, a modest, hidden place so far from Hollywood that studio searchlights would have a hard time finding it. Still, someone had managed. Earlier that day, the phone rang at McDormand’s house, and while she didn’t recognize the man on the other end, he certainly knew who she was. When the caller told her he was watching “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the 2017 movie in which she plays an avenging mother named Mildred, McDormand realized she was on the phone with a fan who had tracked down her unlisted landline. “It was the first creepy call I’ve gotten in 16 years here,” she told me. Though she hung up right away, McDormand now wondered what she might have asked him: “OK, what part were you watching? The scene where I threw the Molotov cocktail at the police station?” Maybe the fan had hoped to speak with righteous Mildred, who harangues priests and cops and hurls fire bombs in the pursuit of justice. Instead, he reached Frances McDormand, a 63-year-old woman who chats up everybody she comes across in her small town, doesn’t like to think of herself as famous, and has won two Oscars. This is the tricky thing about how persuasively McDormand embodies her characters: You think you know her because you’re certain you know them. Whether it’s kindhearted Marge from “Fargo,” tetchy Olive from “Olive Kitteridge,” or bohemian Jane in “Laurel Canyon,” McDormand specializes in playing women with worldviews. You can tell right away what they like and don’t like, who they would be friendly with and who they can’t stand. Since she rarely grants interviews, most people only see the real McDormand blazing an iconoclastic streak through televised awards shows, where she is barefaced instead of Botoxed and once wore her own jean jacket in lieu of borrowed couture. (In Hollywood, this mild noncompliance is tantamount to a declaration of war.) McDormand is highly skeptical of any ceremony where actors are done up like glamorous gladiators, and when her husband, filmmaker Joel Coen, was once asked to produce the Oscars alongside his brother, Ethan, McDormand suggested they set the telecast at Coney Island, which would have forced Hollywood glitterati to mingle with the freak show. That irreverence is McDormand’s most endearing trait: On the day we met, she ducked into a liquor store to satisfy her craving for Fritos — “You know they’re gooood, right?” she teased — and before we sat together on a concrete wall by the coastline, McDormand clambered on top of it and used the length of her splayed body to measure a pandemic-appropriate distance between us. She makes a concerted effort not to treat herself like a precious movie star in the hopes that you won’t, either. That’s why she lives where she lives and why, as she perched on the wall opposite me in an olive puffer jacket, she asked me not to divulge the name of her town. That morning’s phone call aside, “I get to live my more authentic self here,” she said, “and I don’t have to pretend to be anybody else.” She nodded toward the beach, where a handful of people cavorted with their dogs and surfboards. “I don’t mind being their movie star,” she said. “I’m just not going to be yours.” STILL, THE LINE BETWEEN McDORMAND and her characters will only grow blurrier with the release of her intimate new film, “Nomadland.” In this sunset-dappled drama from the director Chloé Zhao, McDormand plays Fern, a widow who packs her things into a van and joins up with a tribe of older itinerant workers to spend their golden years working odd jobs all across the American West. “Nomadland” would eventually require more from this private star than she is used to giving, but when McDormand first met with Zhao in early 2018, she was mostly curious what the up-and-coming director would think of her: “I was like, ‘Man, I just want to be relevant. Do you think I’m relevant?’” Perhaps that’s a surprising admission for a woman who was then on the verge of winning her second Oscar, for “Three Billboards,” but McDormand had just entered her 60s and worried that good opportunities could prove harder to find. Even before that, most of her best-known roles had required some hustle to obtain, which is part of the reason McDormand has lately become a producer, too. “Our industry is such an ageist industry,” Zhao told me by phone. “Someone like Frances McDormand who is just so authentically herself, who has not tried to erase those lines on her face or cover that up to fit into the industry — to me, she’ll be relevant forever.” And it was exactly that authentic self that intrigued Zhao. In her previous films, “The Rider” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” Zhao had cast nonprofessionals and built character arcs for them that were inspired by their actual experiences. “Nomadland,” based on a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, would offer her the same opportunity: Real nomads from Bruder’s book, like Linda May and Swankie, were enticed to play pivotal supporting roles in the film. But since Zhao wanted those women to simply be themselves in front of the camera, she decided that for the sake of coherence, McDormand would need to play a version of herself, too. “It’s very interesting, the layers of it,” Zhao said. “Fran is playing Fern, but even the name ‘Fern’ came from herself and who she thinks she might be if she hit the road.” In fact, McDormand had long harbored a fantasy of turning her back on Hollywood, changing her name, and setting off in an RV upon reaching her 60s. “Chloé tapped into the truth of it,” McDormand said, “which was at different points of my life, I’ve said to my husband, ‘I can’t take this anymore, I’m dropping out.’” “Nomadland” let McDormand play out that dream and a few others. Many of the people McDormand interacts with in the film had no idea she was a famous actress — they figured she was just another nomad, and spoke to her like a normal person in exactly the way that she craves. In some ways, all that verisimilitude could be grueling, too — McDormand was surprised at how exhausted she would feel after long days of simply being present in front of the camera, reacting to the stories real people unspooled. Zhao also asked McDormand to put in actual hours at Fern’s odd jobs, like harvesting beets in Nebraska or working at a warehouse in California. But the result is a performance that McDormand has never given before, one that has less to do with acting and more to do with simply being. As Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wrote in his “Nomadland” review, “McDormand doesn’t disappear into Fern; she’s revealed by Fern, and Fern is revealed by her.” That sort of ineffable, hard-to-pin-down portrait was exactly Zhao’s intention. “I like to think that we have captured a great performance,” she said, “but also, an essence of Fran as well.” Still, the director and her star sometimes disagreed on just how much of that essence to use. Details both large and small have been pulled directly from McDormand’s real life: Fern proudly shows off a set of plates that McDormand’s father bought her as a college graduation gift, and Zhao cast one of the actress’s oldest friends as Fern’s sister so the recriminations they air in the film could have a real weight. But when Zhao floated the idea of finding a role in the film for McDormand’s son, Pedro, or suggested that Fern’s dead spouse, glimpsed only in a photograph, should be played by McDormand’s actual husband, Joel Coen, her lead drew a line in the sand. “I have to believe that it’s not just a documentary of me,” McDormand said. “I did create a character, just like I’ve created myself in 63 years, too.” FOR MOST OF HER LIFE, McDormand has been fascinated by the formula through which one concocts a self-image. How much does it have to do with authenticity, and to what extent is it constructed by playing pretend? “I would say probably fifth grade is the first time I can remember, ‘Oh, I know what they think I am, and I’m going to subvert it,’” she told me. What they knew about McDormand then was that she was the adopted daughter of Vernon McDormand, a minister for the Disciples of Christ. That sort of role in that sort of family required a certain amount of public respectability, but as she got older, and an English teacher at McDormand’s school in Monessen, Pennsylvania, asked her to read the role of Lady Macbeth in a workshop, she found herself thrilled to leave propriety at the door. “That was the hook,” McDormand said. “It was the power of being a really shy, slightly suspect seventh-grader who could stand in front of a group of people and keep their attention.” She loved, too, that Shakespeare’s female characters were as power-hungry as the men: “It’s like I used to say to Joel, ‘Why don’t you guys write better roles for women? In fact, why don’t you just write a role for men and then let me play it?’” She had married Coen not long after making her screen debut in the 1984 noir “Blood Simple,” which he directed with Ethan. Twelve years later, the Coen brothers would give McDormand her signature role, one that could only be played by a woman: Marge, the chirpy, pregnant police chief in “Fargo.” That film made her famous, a condition that McDormand considered a fire to be stomped out: After hiring a publicist, she almost immediately instructed him to turn down most requests. “I made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for 10 years in what other people would think would be a very dangerous moment in a female actor’s career, but it paid off for exactly the reasons I wanted it to,” she said. “It gave me a mystery back to who I was, and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.” To her, “Nomadland” is the culmination of that effort to keep herself unspoiled in the public eye. “That’s why it works,” she said. “That’s why Chloé could bear to even think of doing this with me, because of what I’ve created for years not just as an actor, but in my personal life.” We traipsed back through town, and as we walked up a hill covered in overgrowth and eucalyptus trees, McDormand drew one final line: “So I’m going to pass my house, and then I’m going to leave you,” she said. She asked if I had dinner plans, and directed me to a farm stand I could stop by on the way home. “They’ve got gorgeous little gems and some good old arugula,” she said, “but no eggs right now because the chickens are all cold.” As McDormand offered me kindly advice while standing in front of a felled eucalyptus trunk, I could have sworn I was talking to Fern, who is so practical and self-reliant. It reminded me of a story she had told me earlier: Not long ago, for the drive-in premiere of “Nomadland” in Pasadena, California, McDormand had decided to pull the van from the film out of storage. She thought it would be fun to sit in during the screening, but when she came face to face with the car she had lovingly named “Vanguard,” McDormand found herself overcome. She had considered that van “the interior life of Fern, and therefore me,” she said, and to see Vanguard dirty and filled with junk after two years apart was almost too much to bear. An hour and a half into their reunion, Coen found McDormand still scrubbing the car, dripping sweat, insisting that she needed just a little more time with Vanguard. “I’m cleaning her,” McDormand told him. “I can’t let her go!” It isn’t easy to move on when you’ve made something that requires so much of you. Before we parted ways, I asked McDormand how she felt after making “Nomadland.” I thought she scoffed at me, but she was laughing at the very idea. “Well, at what point?” she said. “Is it afterwards? I don’t know!” Then she shoved her hands into the pockets of her puffer jacket and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove, taking Fern with her.

What Frances McDormand would (and wouldn’t) give to 'Nomadland'

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