042102 Newsday

April 21, 2002
Newsday
Smart Move
by Steve Dollar

Dougray Scott, the nemesis in 'Mission: Impossible 2,' plays a different kind of genius in 'Enigma':
a cryptologist working against the Nazis

LET US NOT misunderstand Dougray Scott. If you know the Scottish actor only from his showy, diabolical turn as Tom Cruise's nemesis in "Mission: Impossible 2" - playing a beefed-up, neo-Bondian evil genius - you probably came to appreciate his steely glint, his athletic skill and his resolute unwillingness to cede the screen to Hollywood's most vigorous narcissist.

That was inspired casting, in a movie mostly concerned with flashy gadgetry and pyrotechnics. But, as multiplex audiences are finding out, there's a lot more to Scott than going mano a mano with Cruise astride airborne

photo by
Bruce Gilbert

motorcycles. He's kind of historical, this guy: a buff, a seeker, a digger for details who doesn't shy away from roles that require an obsessive commitment to recapturing moments long gone and even half-obscured.

Thus, his performance as British mathematician Tom Jericho in "Enigma," a romantic melodrama that opened Friday about cryptologists working secretly - and feverishly - to decipher Nazi code signals during World War II. The title has a double meaning. It alludes to the code-generating Enigma machine invented by the Germans and to Jericho's fixation on a mysterious colleague (played by Saffron Burrows), who not only prompts his nervous breakdown, but vanishes with barely a trace - amid suspicions of traitorous espionage. Once another codebuster (Kate Winslet, deliberately drabbed-down) gets involved, the plot twists.

"It's instinct," Scott, 36, says of his acting choices, which include the role of a dying picture framer-turned-hit man opposite John Malkovich's slippery title character in the forthcoming "Ripley's Game," and Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in a pending drama to be produced by Mick Jagger, who was responsible for bringing "Enigma" to the screen. "Usually it's something that's far away from yourself that gives you the curiosity to find out who they are, and discovering them. It's like going on a journey - without sounding too arty, it's going on a journey of discovery. You start from nothing."

Scott's a bit bleary on a recent morning, plopped in the cushiony booth of an empty basement bar in one of those self-consciously chic Manhattan hotels, the kind frequented by aspiring supermodels. He flew in from London the night before, went to the premiere (where he hung out with Martin Scorsese), was treated rudely at a restaurant ("Got kicked out! Didn't know I was in!" he carps) and is worried about his camera, which went missing and is now, allegedly, en route to his room upstairs. Ah, but latte arrives and things start looking up.

Scott's lack of forced cheerfulness is a refreshing change of pace from the usual celebrity pantomime. There's not a hint of slick about him. He's got that raffish, vaguely unkempt thing going on, with long hair and a goatee that should belong to a musketeer or a Dutch master.

Actually, he's got two weeks to go on a new film, "Cromwell and Fairfax," about the British civil war, playing Thomas Fairfax, commander of the victorious New Model Army. "Hence, the hair and the beard," says Scott, who adopted the "Dougray" after his French grandmother's surname. "I'm fascinated by history. Always have [been], since I was a child."

Though director Michael Apted suggests Scott's casting for "Engima" was based on his post-"M:I-2" bankability as a box office draw who was also recognizably Anglo (no Yanks faking it here), there was obviously something more profound that suited Scott for the role. "He's an actor who can play smart, which not all actors can do - even smart actors," Apted says. "I could see something in Dougray's eyes, some passion, some obsessiveness."

Mention this to Scott and he pauses for a beat. Smart? He looks you in the eye. "I don't know how," he says, either half-serious or half-joking. "You jump into someone's skin, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. You can't play smart. There's no trick to doing it. To me, the only way is you get inside their head. The closer you get to them, and, of course, someone who has those words to say, it's believable that people think they're smart."

The actor, who lives in London with his wife, casting director Sarah Trevis, and 4-year-old twins Eden and Gabriel, thrives on that challenge. "It's about understanding the rhythm of a mathematician, really," he says of "Enigma." "Which is why I spoke to so many of them, to get the rhythm that goes through his head, the numbers he assimilates and calculates. He's a fascinating character to play and understand."

One of the more difficult aspects of the role was dropping all the muscular bulk Scott acquired during "M:I-2." Fleet Street tabloids touted his "cabbage soup diet," with which he dropped 22 pounds. He had to lose even more weight to play a leukemia victim in "Ripley's Game." This may have something to do with Scott's desire to play Dylan Thomas, who died of drink at age 43, far from svelte. "His poetry, the rhythm of his poetry, is like the sea," Scott says, a bit dreamily. Then he smiles. "I'll have to put on a lot of weight. That will be fun."