Frances McDormand has revealed she was offered a job in Target while working on her new film Nomadland.

The movie sees the award-winning actor play Fern, who becomes a modern-day nomad after losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis.

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While working on the film, director Chloé Zhao (The Rider) wanted the star to “blend in” with a real nomadic community. Speaking at a press conference held on Zoom, the filmmaker said: “It was really about setting up an ecosystem, working with the nomads, because they are not always stationary and getting Fran to blend in.”

McDormand, who has won two Oscars in her career, said that she knew the strategy was working when she was offered a job in a shop. “It was successful because in one town in Nebraska I went to the local Target and I was offered employment,” she said.

“I was offered a form to fill out. I went back to Chloé and said: ‘It’s working!’”

Nomadland won the top prize, the Golden Lion, at this year’s Venice Film Festival. It is based on the book of the same name by Jessica Bruder and will open in cinemas in the UK on January 1, 2021.

McDormand is set to appear in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch – a film about an outpost of an American newspaper in France – and Joel Coen’s upcoming take on Macbeth. In the later, she will play Lady Macbeth, with Denzel Washington starring alongside her as Lord Macbeth.

Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Ineson and Harry Melling will also feature in the film, which currently does not have a release date.