0502 GQ

May 2002
GQ (UK edition)
Mission Accomplished
by Alex Bilmes
a

Since crossing pool cues with Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott has become known as Britain's most intense film actor, and his taste in suits is every bit as sharp as his screen presence. Styling by Jo Levin. Photographs by Donald Christie.

The sublime pleasures of picture framing. Yet another reason to eat fish and chips. Why you don't want to beat Tom Cruise at pool. The iniquities of world debt. The portliness of Dylan Thomas. The fickle fortunes of Hibernian FX. The upsides of celebrity. The friendship behind the English Civil War. Sean Connery's sizable shadow. The perils of being called "intense". And why it's hard to be a heart-throb in the morning.

A conversation with Dougray Scott can be as dizzying affair. Spend an evening in the company of this estimable Scots actor and you will, in all probability, find yourself discoursing on a spectacularly diverse range of topics. The above list provides just a sample of the conversational gambits eyeballed, flirted with and then discarded over the course of a few drinks in the bar at Claridge's hotel in London. At 36, the Fife-born Scott - star of Mission: Impossible II and Enigma - is among our finest and most successful film actors, as well as one of our more loquacious celebrities. Even if he does talk. In extremely short. Sharp. Sentences.

	Scott is also possibly our most unassuming thespian, which might explain why many people haven't yet heard of him. Or hadn't, until his private life was splashed across the tabloids last year when he briefly parted from his wife just as his Enigma co-star, Kate Winslet, announced her separation from her husband. Tongues, as they will, wagged.
Long lenses focused. Headlines jostled. Ultimately, of course, it emerged that Winslet had gone off with Scott's friend, the film and theatre director Sam Mendes, rather than our man, who has returned to his marital home.

But Scott still bears the scars of his tangle with the tabloids. "I do try to stay away from the celebrity lifestyle," he says. "If you go out all the time and you're seen to covet that kind of attention and press coverage, which I don't, then you're seen as fair game for people to invade your life. I've had that aspect of it and it's horrible and I don't accept it and it makes me really, really angry because it's none of anyone's business." For a split second, Scott looks really, really pained. But then he's off again, happily discussing the dramatic twists ands turns of his idiosyncratic career path.

Until the intervention of Tom Cruise, Scott had been a happy, jobbing actor - 'totally content", he says. He'd done TV (Soldier, Soldier; The Crow Road) and a handful of films. He'd suffered the indignity of filling in for Mickey Rourke in the best forgotten Another 9 1/2 Weeks; he'd played Robert Graves in the worthy but unsatisfying Pat Barker adaptation, Regeneration; he'd been to Hollywood to star opposite Drew Barrymore in Ever After, an updated of the Cinderella story which did modest business in the States. But it was his film-filching performance as the bent cop Terry Walsh in Twin Town, Kevin Allen's 1997 Welsh hit, which drew Scott to the attention of cinema's most powerful star and landed him the role of the psychotic Sean Ambrose in the John Woo-directed M:I-2.

"It was kind of bizarre," says Scott, still relishing the tale of how a practically unknown British actor found himself sharing screen time with the star of Top Gun, Jerry Maguire and Eyes Wide Shut. "Tom saw Twin Town and loved it," he says. "And thought for whatever reason that I was the guy who was going to play his nemesis. They came to me, which is quite extraordinary really. So they flew e to LA, I went and met Tom in his house and talked for a couple of hours with him and John Woo. Played a game of pool. I cleared the table. Not really a good move. I thought, "Well, I've fucked this one up."

But he won the next one. And then he just turned to John and said, 'This is great, isn't it?' And John went, 'Yeah.' And by the time I got back to the hotel they'd started doing the deal. I was the only actor they saw, so it was quite flattering. No test, no audition, nothing. He had the confidence in me. He'd seen everything I'd done, I think. He'd done his homework."

Did Cruise ever pinpoint exactly what it was he'd seen in his future co-star? "No, he didn't," deadpans Scott. "He just said, 'I think you're a fantastic actor and I want to work with you.' And I said, 'Oh, that's very nice. Thank you very much, Tom.'"

	Perhaps Cruise had been impressed by Scott's much praised on-screen intensity. It's a quality he has in person, too, and one that has been noticed and remarked upon by Mick Jagger, the producer of Enigma and of the mooted biopic of Dylan Thomas in which Scott is tentatively slated to star. Scott scoffs when the word "intense" comes up in
conversation, though, and seems genuinely perplexed by the tag. "I think maybe it's because I do take my work seriously," he says. "Yes, I do a lot of research, but I enjoy it. It's what I've always done. It doesn't make me better than anyone else."

Perhaps not, but Scott's studious approach to his profession has hardly done him a disservice. After M:I-2, which he confesses improved his career prospects immeasurably - "It certainly meant the money changed enormously," - Scott opted to return to the state, starring opposite Ray Winstone in To The Green Fields Beyond for Sam Mendes at London's Donmar Warehouse. "I wanted to do something totally different and I suppose I'm into challenging myself," he says. "I hadn't been on stage for seven years so I was absolutely petrified, but I did it, I somehow got through it." He also got through last year's Enigma, director Michael Apted's drama about the Bletchley Park code-breakers during WWII, in which he slimmed down to play the lovelorn genius Tom Jericho. It was his first leading role in a major, grown-up movie and arguably his most complex, satisfying performance to date.

Next up is Ripley's Game - another big-screen outing for Patricia Highsmith's duplicitous charmer, though otherwise unconnected to The Talented Mr. Ripley - in which he stars with John Malkovich, who plays the eponymous anti-hero, and Ray Winstone again. "It's a great part," says Scott. "I play a picture framer who's got myeloid leukaemia. He's very

ill and very vulnerable. Ripley asks him to commit a murder because he's so innocent that n one would ever suspect him. And because he's going to be paid a lot of money for it and he wants to look after his kid and his wife, he agrees. But he finds himself in a completely different environment from what he's used to ad he starts to implode. It was a tough shoot," he says, before slipping up and mentioning that word again. "Very intense."

Equally intense is Scott's next project, Cromwell & Fairfax, on which he is also executive producer. He has been working on scripts and budgets for over two years, readying for the screen this story of the relationship between the two Roundhead parliamentarians who deposed Charles I. Tim Roth plays Oliver Cromwell; Scott stars as his right-hand man, Thomas Fairfax; and Rupert Everett is the English monarch. "It's expensive and it's exciting," says Scott. His character is "a humble, selfless man, but very meticulous and a wonderful warrior, a great tactician. People thought that he was overtaken by a strange spirit when he went into battle. He had so much presence."

Beyond that, Scott is unsure. He's coy about the rumours positing him as a future James Bond - "I'd think about doing it, obviously. Of course I would. But big Seam Connery did so well with it, and with me being Scottish, people are going to make comparisons." But he seems set on taking on the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas for Jagger's Jagged Films. "These things, when they come up I think, 'Well, I can't not do this.' And that's my career plan: to do things that I can't possibly walk away from. It's such a huge commitment when you take on a film, because of the preparation involved. Especially playing someone like Dylan Thomas because I have to put on a lot of weight and it's a very specific man you're dealing with. But it's a very, very brilliant script." Before that though, there's the small Scottish film, The Bum's Rush, which he's producing. All things considered, Scott is a busy man. "Yes," he says, "but it's good to be busy, and to be offered films and to be asked to do stuff that you really want to do."

The interview is over and talk turns to matters more general, in particular the actor's love for Hibernian FC. In the background the hotel's string quartet strikes up the Gershwin brothers' "I've Got Rhythm". "Terribly ironic, innit?" says Scott when it's pointed out that he's come a long way from his working-class roots to the sybaritic surrounds of this Mayfair watering hole. Perhaps it is, but on this occasion Ira's lyrics seem remarkably apt. Right now, as far as Scott's concerned, few could ask for anything more.

- Alex Bilmes GQ