Scotland’s finest filmmakers Martin Compston ●
big action movies has continued apace with roles in the yet-to-be-released The Rundown (American title) co-starring Christopher Walken, and Around the World in 80 Days co-starring Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan. (CB) Gerard Butler Actor
Butler is one of those rare actors whose life is more interesting than the roles he has so far played. Born in Glasgow and raised in Paisley, he only met his father when he was 16. Set for a career in law, he was president of Glasgow University Law Society when he was approached by Stephen Berkoff in a café and invited to audition for a part in a stage version of Coriolanus. Hr went on to screen roles in Mrs Brown, Tomorrow Never Dies and Tales of the Mummy. Playing the part of Brown’s brother in the first film, Butler contracted hypothermia after shooting the opening seen, for which he had to dive into a cold sea. In addition, he won himself a ‘Certificate of Bravery’ from the Royal Humane Society after he dived into the River Tay, this time to save a young boy from drowning. Butler’s breakthrough role in the US was as Atila the Hun in a TV mini-series, and subsequent performances in Reign of Fire and the second Tomb Raider have proved that he has enough presence to make thinly sketched action heroes real, and rather sexy. He got the lead in The Phantom of Opera, and the odds of him becoming the next Bond are 10-1. (TA) Peter Capaldi Actor, writer, director
Peter Capaldi’s breakthrough role was in Local Hero. Looking at the films he has written and directed since, it is tempting to see the influence of that critically and commercially successful movie in every chicane of his career. The two features Capaldi wrote – 1992’s Soft Top Hard Shoulder and Strictly Sinatra nine years later – were both downbeat comedies imbued with the same vaguely-sentimental realism expressed by Bill Forsyth (although Capaldi’s films explore the idiosyncratic world of the Italian Glaswegian community he grew up in). Oddly, he is perhaps best known for directing the short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life, largely because it won an Oscar in 1995. A surreal, 20 minute reimagining of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, it appeared to have opened up great
avenues of possibility for him Like Forsyth before him, however, nothing came of the trip to Hollywood. He came home to make Strictly Sinatra – a film that hopefully proved that his future lies in directing rather than writing. As a result of prioritising these aspects of his career, his acting CV has a definite hotch-potch feel to it – Capaldi has taken odd parts in a number of television series since appearing in Shooting Fish and Mr Bean back in 1997. (TA) Robert Carlyle (see panel p32)
Peter Capaldi in Soft Top Hard Shoulder
Robbie Coltrane Actor
Art-school drop out-turned-stand-up comedian, the rotund Robbie Coltrane makes for one of the most unlikely of screen idols. But he has been lucky to land two roles on the small screen that captured the nation’s imaginations. The first was Big Jazza in the John Byrnescripted Tutti Frutti. which first proved that he wasn’t just a better than average buffoon from the Scottish Comedy Unit. It still remains one of the best loved TV series north of the border. In 1993, Coltrane landed another career transforming part, Fritz in Cracker, written by Jimmy McGovern. If he thought, however, that he had earned the right to some gravitas when it came to his big screen roles, he was mistaken. Coltrane may have moved on from the truly daft roles of the early 90s (Nuns on the Run, The Pope Must Die), but he was still left playing quirky walk-ons in British franchises including Valentin Zurovsky, the best Bond regular bit part since Jaws. He is perhaps best known to the younger generation for playing Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. His role as Sergeant Godley in the Alan Moore creation From Hell proves, however, that Coltrane is best when inhabiting a darker, murkier, dramatic world. (TA) Martin Compston Robbie Coltrane
Actor
David Bradley. It is a name that should have given Martin Compston pause for thought. Bradley was the young kid who Ken Loach plucked out of obscurity back in the late 60s to play the part of Billy Casper in Kes. Although he continued acting, Bradley has never performed to anywhere near the same standard as he did when he was a debutante. Some 30 years later and Martin Compston – a young kid on the books of The 50 Best Scottish Films of all Time THE LIST 31