Beating yourself up

The dastardly villain who held the world to ransom over a deadly virus in Mission Impossible 2 is sitting in a café talking about religious absolutism.

'I'm intrigued by this man who goes to these exceptional lengths to get closer to God,' says Dougray Scott. 'The hair shirt, self-flagellation, 6am masses. It's an incredible journey.'

The man in question is the turbulent priest Thomas à Becket; the eponymous subject of Jean Anouilh's 1959 play and Scott's new West End role. He's loving it. 'Becket is such an extreme character. He doesn't love anybody, you could argue he doesn't even love himself,' he says.

'Yet when Henry II makes him archbishop he's suddenly given this opportunity to make a direct line with God. And the relationship with Henry - it's so complex. It's rather like Gordon and Tony. And the abuses of power in the play, and Henry's egotism.'

He could go on talking about it all morning. Scott's determination to understand his characters by immersing himself totally in the role is famous. Filming was temporarily halted during Mission Impossible 2 because Scott had fallen from a motorcycle after insisting on doing as many of his own stunts as possible.

Research for Becket may not quite have stretched to hairshirts in order to appreciate the extent of Becket's devotion but then, as Scott points out, the rehearsal process provides its own journey of understanding.

'It's terrific being able to take five weeks to fully excavate your character,' he says, with the incredulity of a man used to the unforgiving schedules of the movies.

Over the past few years, Scott has quietly begun to challenge Ewan McGregor as Scotland's biggest new Hollywood player, ever since Tom Cruise saw his performance as the druggy copper in the Welsh film Twin Town and chose him to be his co-star in Mission Impossible 2. Other film credits include Ripley's Game and the civil war drama To Kill A King.

Yet it was theatre that first sparked Scott's interest in acting as a football-mad teenager growing up on a council estate in Glenrothes in Fife. One day, he picked up Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman, idly started to read it and was immediately galvanised by the way it spoke directly to his own world (his father was a salesman).

'Ever since then, the common theme in the jobs I've done, even big mainstream films such as Mission Impossible, has been their power to communicate,' says Scott.