Following Joshua’s answer in code, I came up with the following which seems to work well:
- (CGRect)boundingRectForCharacterRange:(NSRange)range
{
NSTextStorage *textStorage = [[NSTextStorage alloc] initWithAttributedString:[self attributedText]];
NSLayoutManager *layoutManager = [[NSLayoutManager alloc] init];
[textStorage addLayoutManager:layoutManager];
NSTextContainer *textContainer = [[NSTextContainer alloc] initWithSize:[self bounds].size];
textContainer.lineFragmentPadding = 0;
[layoutManager addTextContainer:textContainer];
NSRange glyphRange;
// Convert the range for glyphs.
[layoutManager characterRangeForGlyphRange:range actualGlyphRange:&glyphRange];
return [layoutManager boundingRectForGlyphRange:glyphRange inTextContainer:textContainer];
}