Scott’s prime
Interview | Alistair Duncan His rise from the ranks of Soldier Soldier to the elite environs of Desperate Housewives and Hollywood has brought Dougray Scott fame and riches – but his heart will forever be in Scotland, he tells voyager SCOTTISH THROUGH AND through, is how you’d best describe the actor Dougray Scott. Speaking in [...]
Interview | Alistair Duncan
His rise from the ranks of Soldier Soldier to the elite
environs of Desperate Housewives and Hollywood
has brought Dougray Scott fame and riches – but his
heart will forever be in Scotland, he tells voyager
alt="Actor Dougray Scott">
SCOTTISH THROUGH AND through, is how you’d
best describe the actor Dougray Scott. Speaking
in a creamy Caledonian burr from his home in Los
Angeles, apparently he still sleeps best in Fife.
“My life has changed enormously from where I
was brought up,” he acknowledges. “But ultimately the lessons
I have learned from growing up in Fife have stayed with me.
It’s hard to describe. Essentially though, I’m Scottish. I’m
Scottish. I’m Scottish. Wherever I am in the world, it’s the case.
There’s something incredibly positive that has come out of my
upbringing in Scotland that I still have a connection with today.”
Life has changed dramatically however, since Scott
grew up in the former mining town of Glenrothes. In the
intervening years, he has climbed to the top of the acting
tree, starring in Hollywood juggernaut Mission Impossible II,
World War Two thriller Enigma and hit TV series Desperate
Housewives. As he’s done so, Scott, 42, has also reached a
stage in his life where he now sees the fuller picture.
“It’s interesting, the movie industry,” he reflects. “It can
change very quickly from one second to the next. What’s
important is to retain some equilibrium in one’s life and not
get caught up in the rat race aspect of it.”
From this it seems Scott has reached a level of serenity. But
then, he has had his fair share of ups-and-downs in the movie
business. Famously, he missed out on the leading part of
Wolverine in X-Men, one of the most commercially successful
movies ever, plus he was rumoured to be a shoo-in for the
role of James Bond after the reign of Pierce Brosnan, though it
eventually went to Daniel Craig. But, in spite of these setbacks
(or, possibly, because of them) Scott is philosophical.
alt="Playing villain Sean Ambrose in Mission Impossible II">
“It was having children that did it for me,” says the father-oftwo.
“I started to think: ‘What is all this about? How do I attain
a sense of ease about living my life? Not just be all-consumed
by acting, success, box office and all that.’ It’s been a voyage of
discovery for me. I think now, I’m a lot more content.”
Starting out as an actor, it was “never about being a
movie star or being incredibly rich” but simply that he got an
unparalleled buzz from acting. “If you ask any actor why they
do this, it’s a difficult question to answer,” he says. “It just
feels right. There’s a feeling of knowledge that’s been gained
through acting that has made one a better person.”
Scott, the son of a former footballer and amateur actor
dad who earned a living selling fridges, trained at the Welsh
College of Music & Drama and proved to be the star pupil
of his year. His first break came in the TV series Soldier
Soldier and was followed up two years later with a part
in the Welsh black comedy movie Twin Town, in which he
played corrupt police detective Terry Walsh. It was this 1997
film, a small-scale hit, that was Scott’s real launch pad: “It’s
the movie that got me noticed in America,” he declares.
alt="Major Rory Taylor in Soldier Soldier">
With his classically handsome, if rugged, looks, Scott was
always destined for a role as Prince Charming in one form or
another. It came the next year in the role of Prince Henry in
the Cinderella fable Ever After (“a big turning point”), which
paved the way for the film that solidified Scott’s standing in
Tinseltown in 2000 – Mission Impossible II, for which he was
hand-picked by Tom Cruise to play the chief baddie.
Scott admits: “Being in M:I-2 threw me into a spotlight.
At this stage I had a choice about what I wanted to do with
my career, with my life.”
But doing this film meant that another major part that
Scott was waiting for fell by the wayside. “X-Men’s producers
asked me to play the role of Wolverine, which I agreed to. But
then, because filming on M:I-2 went on for so long, I couldn’t
do it.” However, Scott insists that he has no time for looking
over his shoulder. “Having regrets is destructive,” he says. “If
you live in the past, then it stops you being creative in the
future. You’ve only got one life. If I look at my life realistically,
I’ve got to be grateful for a lot of things that I have. And I am
grateful. I’m very fortunate on many levels.”
Enigma, in 2001, saw Scott in leading man mode. He
played brilliant but troubled mathematician Tom Jericho in
the film, which is loosely based on the true story of how
Allied codebreakers cracked the Germans’ Enigma messaging
machine during World War Two. The project saw an A-team
of stellar British talents collaborate – Tom Stoppard adapted
the book, written by Robert Harris, while Saffron Burrows and
Kate Winslet co-starred, and its producer was Mick Jagger.
alt="code-breaking hero Tom Jericho in Enigma’">
With dashing British actor Scott now taking on major roles,
the rumour mill went into overdrive: it was widely speculated
that he was to be the next James Bond after Pierce Brosnan
was due to step down. In the end, Scott was pipped to the
post by Daniel Craig. In hindsight, was he as lined up for the
role as everyone said, or was it just industry gossip?
“You’d have to ask Barbara Broccoli,” he laughs, referring to
the veteran producer of Bond films. “Yes, they spoke for a long
time about it. But I didn’t play James Bond. Daniel Craig did
it and he did it brilliantly. I know Daniel and I like him – he’s a
great actor. For me, it’s just a project I didn’t do.”
Yet Scott found himself very much in demand by the
producers of smash American series Desperate Housewives.
He was cast as Ian Hainsworth, the British boyfriend of Teri
Hatcher’s Susan Mayer, and was initially asked to do only five
episodes. “They then turned around and asked me to do 18,”
he says, casually. “I said yes because I was having fun.”
The schedule of shooting major network shows like
Desperate Housewives is famously fast-paced. Scott confirms
that it was “a very quick turn-around… with a nine-to-five
feeling about it”. He adds: “Episodic television, you get into a
rhythm with it. It’s more like a normal job. But I really enjoyed
it – it was a good atmosphere.”
alt="As Prince Henry with ‘Cinderella’">
The end result of Scott’s lengthy stint on Desperate
Housewives is that his profile in the US has mushroomed.
“It makes you understand how massive American TV is.
You can do movies all your life, then you do a TV series and
you’ll be so much more recognised in the street.”
Scott says that he’s a happier man now than he’s ever
been before, largely due to the fact that last June he married
Claire Forlani, an English-born actress who starred in Meet
Joe Black (alongside Brad Pitt and Antony Hopkins).
“Claire’s my best friend,” says her new husband, sincerely.
“I love spending time with her. We go out occasionally and
have meals, stuff like that. But it’s a very quiet existence. We
hang out, we see friends. I don’t have a wild lifestyle. Well,
not any more. I left that behind years ago,” he smiles.
Scott, who splits his time between homes in London
and Los Angeles, has nine-year-old twins by his first
marriage to casting agent Sarah Trevis (the couple divorced
in 2005), son Gabriel and daughter Eden.
“They are both performers and have an incredible amount
of confidence in them that I would never have imagined in
myself at that age,” Scott says, explaining why he’s happy
to encourage them down the acting path. “When they were
younger, I tried to keep them away from premieres and
other functions, but as they’ve got older they’ve wanted to
come more. It’s important to pass onto them the knowledge
that I have – that this is only a tiny part of it. What’s really
important is the passion for the job. It’s not about the
razzmatazz of premieres, magazines and chat shows.”
These days he mostly shuns party invitations, preferring
to let his hair down by following football (he supports
Hibernian FC) or playing golf. The latter is a particular
obsession, a game he’s played since childhood days in Fife,
where his father introduced him to it.
“Where I was brought up, golf was a working man’s
game. Everybody played. It was incredibly cheap,” he recalls.
“I still can’t get my head around the fact that some of the
golf clubs in LA cost $250,000 to join.”
alt="Scott with the other male cast members of Desperate Housewives.">
The golf-mad star was recently announced as the face
of Dunhill’s golfwear collection and took part in the starstudded
Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland last
October, where he rubbed shoulders with fellow celebrity
golfers Bill Murray, Hugh Grant, Samuel L Jackson and
Dennis Hopper, who all competed with professionals.
Now Scott’s organising a celebrity golf championship in
July, the proceeds of which will go to Leuka, a leukaemia
charity based in Hammersmith Hospital in London. “I
came across Leuka through research for Ripley’s Game,” he
explains. ‘I was playing a character who had leukaemia and
at Hammersmith Hospital I met Professor John Goldman,
who is at the forefront of leukaemia research. He asked me
afterwards to become a patron of Leuka.”
He has roped in celebrity pals James Nesbitt, Ronan
Keating, Jamie Redknapp and Rob Brydon so far and says that
he wants it to be as raucous as can be: “We envisage having
signs up saying, ‘Noise please’,” he joshes.
alt="With his wife, British/Italian actress Claire Forlani.">
Scott has recently finished two projects, a Danish film
called Love Me Forever, in which he plays a paparazzo, and
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, in which he plays the split-personality
physician created by fellow Scot Robert Louis Stevenson.
In spite of his ambivalence to the movie world’s puffery,
what are his plans for the future? “Acting is the only life that
I know. If anything, I’m more interested in it now because I
have more knowledge of it and, I guess, I’m getting better
at it,” he says. “I was struggling to comprehend what it all
meant before. I’m a lot wiser now.”
