Dougray Scott is in denial. He is on the verge of
being a major celebrity but he's having none of it. Ever since he
starred opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2 last year he
has been thrust upward into another stratosphere. He has even had his
own stalker - a sure sign that he has made it in the Hollywood Hills.
Once just a star of television, stage and independent
films, Scott is now tipped to make it big, but the Hollywood thing is
not for him. At the moment London is home. Even that is a far cry from
where he grew up, on a council estate in Firth, Scotland. The closest he
has come to having the correct trappings is his hiring of a publicist
with a Wilshire Boulevard address.
Scott is your everyday working-class bloke who has
made it to the top of his profession, but still wants to retain a link
to his roots. You get the feeling that the 35-year-old would prefer to
steer clear of movie stars and would rather have a pint with his mates
down the pub. But the interest in this six foot Scotsman has increased
enormously since his work in Mission Impossible 2, which has
grossed more than $525m (£362m), making it the biggest moneymaking film
in the new millennium. You might say that life for Scott is about to
change.
"A lot of work has landed on my lap since that
film, a lot more scripts and hopefully lots more money," he says,
laughing. "People might stare at me on the Tube now whereas before
they wouldn't have recognised me. Some want to have their picture taken
with me. It is a bit unnerving, but it comes with the territory, doesn't
it?" And the stalker? "It happened when I was filming in
Australia. I would have happily dealt with him myself, but you can't go
round beating people up in my situation. Eventually I got security to
deal with him."
Having recently finished an acclaimed stint in the
London play To the Green Fields Beyond, directed by Oscar-winner
Sam Mendes, Scott would rather talk team tactics than theatrics. This is
a man who loves his football. At the party following the London premiere
of Mission Impossible 2 everyone was looking for Dougray.
Tucked away in a corner, quite apart from the chaos, with his family at
his side, he was engaged in a lengthy conversation with Alex McLeish,
legendary Scotland player and now the manager of Hibernian Football Club
- Dougray's team. McLeish, I learn, was something of a boyhood hero to
Scott. "So, you have a mild interest in Hibernian Football
Club," I ask?
He responds by laughing deeply: "I am an
enormous fan of Hibs. I used to go to Easter Road with my dad when I was
a young boy. But these days I can only get up for the Sunday
games." He seems mildly irritated that his career is getting in the
way of the chance to watch football.
As a young boy growing up in Fife, a half-hour
outside Edinburgh, Scott fancied himself as a footballer. It was the
only thing that fired his passion. But, as he himself admits, passion
means nothing without talent and he came up short in that department.
Then he developed an interest in acting, but without much encouragement.
It was not the obvious choice for young men growing up in Fife - an area
with widespread unemployment. Most of the lads he grew up with found
work (if they were lucky) in the nearby shipyards. The headmaster of
Auchmuty High School in Fife once dismissed him as a "waster",
someone who would surely not amount to much in life.
"He was very Calvinistic. He thought that
success meant academic success. He had no time for those of us who were
from a working class background,'' Scott remembers, "He
concentrated on those who were a bit posher than the rest of us."
But it was different at home - Scott's father seems
to have been the one person who encouraged him to act. He was a stage
actor himself for five or six years before Scott was born. Sadly, he
died four years ago before his son's career really soared.
"My father was a huge inspiration in my life. He
taught me to treat people the way you expect to be treated
yourself."
After school, Scott headed to Cardiff where he
attended the Welsh College of Music and Drama. From there he worked in
many London stage productions until he scored his first television role
in the BBC series Soldier, Soldier. A run of television roles
followed culminating in the Highlander series.
But it was the low budget British film Twin Town
that caught the attention of American audiences. Though it didn't do too
well in Britain, his role as a dodgy copper was one of the bright spots
of the project, and led to a leading role in Ever After - a
Cinderella story, in which he starred as Prince Henry of France
opposite Drew Barrymore.
For the part he dropped his Scottish brogue and
adopted with conviction the accent of a soft-spoken upper class English
noble. It allowed him the opportunity to display versatility, something
Ms Barrymore gushed over whenever the opportunity arose. "Dougray'
is gorgeous. He's so handsome," she says. "He can play all
sorts of men from different times and places. He's a very, very talented
actor." Scott remains unmoved but admits that the role caught the
attention of Tom Cruise.
"Tom saw Twin Town and Ever After
and then he asked me to meet the casting director John Woo. They just
decided I was the right person for the job. I never auditioned for I
just met him for about three hours in his house in LA. It was as simple
as that."
Shooting on the film took him Australia for almost eight months. Rather
than leave his long time partner Sarah Trevis (a casting director) and
the two-and-a-half-year-old twins at home they packed up their things
and went along.
"It wouldn't be fair to them or to me," he
says of the thought of being away for so long, "It's one of the
reasons why doing this play in London was so nice. I got to see my
family."
The experience of working with Cruise is not lost on
Scott. He was astonished at the work ethic Americans possess. Cruise, it
should be noted, insisted on doing his own stunts for the film including
hair-raising climbing scenes 2,000ft in the air. Energetic, is how Scott
describes his colleague and the two were both a literal and figurative
match for one another. Today they remain friends. But he won't be drawn
on any gossip. "People ask me what he's like. But I feel there is a
certain responsibility there to guard his privacy.''
As the new year arrives Scott was waiting for the
release of his latest effort, Enigma - a Second World War
thriller, directed by Michael Apted and produced by Mick Jagger and
Lorne Michaels. Scott believes it's his best work to date. Alongside
Kate Winslet, Scott plays an introverted cryptologist who suffers an
emotional breakdown while breaking the Enigma code employed by the
German military during the war. The effort required for the part,
including shedding a few stone off his athletic-looking body, was
extreme.
"I finished filming Mission Impossible 2 and
then immediately started prepping for Enigma," he reveals.
"I read all kinds of books on codebreaking. I am fasinated by that
period. I even went down to Bletchley Park to learn about the
machines."
Scott admits that having time to himself is "a
distant memory": "The ability to say 'no' is quite difficult
especially if you are offered material which is challenging and that
is
