Ain't no fool

Published on Sunday 13 April 2008 20:10

Ewen Bremner's stock is rising fast in Hollywood, but his feet are still firmly on the ground – there's no danger just yet of the actor decamping to LaLa Land, hears BRIAN PENDREIGH

EWEN Bremner does not fit too easily into the standard image of a Hollywood star. Tall? No. Dark? Ginger actually. Handsome? Well, not conventionally so. More gawky than handsome. Living in a mansion in Beverly Hills? No. He still lives in his hometown of Edinburgh.

It is more than a decade now since Bremner's unforgettable turn as the gormless Spud in Trainspotting. Since then he has appeared in such big-budget movies as Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Around the World in 80 Days and Alien vs Predator. From Scotland, this 37-year-old actor jets off around the world on a string of foreign assignments like some real-life James Bond. His latest job took him to the Bahamas and Australia, where he had to pretend to be Ukrainian, learn scuba-diving and deal with a new strain of lethal, invisible jellyfish.

Fool's Gold, the film in question, has been described as "Romancing the Stone: The Swimwear Edition". Matthew McConaughey plays an underwater treasure hunter, Bremner is Alfonz, his (Ukrainian) partner, Kate Hudson is McConaughey's estranged wife and Donald Sutherland the multi-millionaire who backs their expedition. Needless to say, there are sundry villains out to make life difficult.

Bremner says it covers "all bases" – action, adventure, romance and comedy. It is unchallenging entertainment, with no pretence to be anything else. It was, however, fairly challenging for those involved. "I had to learn scuba diving," says Bremner. "We all turned up (in Australia] a couple of weeks early just to do the exams and all the medical stuff." Bremner had no mishaps, but co-star Donald Sutherland was less fortunate. "He got an embolism on his lungs and he came a cropper. They had to find a dive replacement for some of his scenes."

And that was not the only problem. "The production was supposed to be four months, but it turned out to be seven months because we kept on running into these jellyfish called Irukandji. There are seven different kinds of jellyfish that are floating around in the waters around Australia, but there's a newish breed called Irukandji, which are almost imperceptible, because they are the size of your pinkie nail and they're translucent, but people die from the pain, it's so intense. We had some crew attacked and one of the cast doubles got attacked as well. Our people survived because they were big, beefy guys, real muscle-men kind of guys. It's kids and the elderly who are more at risk.

"The production had to shut down and travel 1,000 or 2,000 miles down the coast and reassemble. And we got attacked again by the same little pesky fish and so eventually we went to the Bahamas because that was the only place they could guarantee that we would not run into these fish." The film cost a reported $70 million (35.5m), which is easy to understand given the combination of its scale and the problems it encountered. But it has already grossed that on its initial American release.

One character refers to Alfonz as the "Ukrainian sidekick". But Bremner insists he is perfectly happy with his lot and has no ambition to play the sort of romantic or action-man lead played by McConaughey or Ben Affleck, his co-star in Pearl Harbor. "I don't think the world is ready for me playing Matthew McConaughey's parts," he laughs. "I've been really lucky to get the kind of parts that I've got."

Bremner was born in Edinburgh, the son of two art teachers, who enrolled him in Edinburgh Theatre Workshop's playgroup while they went shopping. In his early teens he landed a starring role as a schoolboy in the Scottish comedy Heavenly Pursuits, with Tom Conti and Helen Mirren. At 17 he moved to London, where he played Mark Renton in a stage version of Trainspotting (Ewan McGregor played the character in the film), though he does not remember ever making a conscious decision to become an actor.

He had a small but memorable role in Mike Leigh's Naked in 1993, as an angry, inarticulate Scot, waiting for his girlfriend Maggie, like some Celtic version of the tramps waiting for Godot. He appeared with Sylvester Stallone in the comic book adaptation Judge Dredd and was a comparative veteran by the time of the film Trainspotting. He moved back to Scotland from London a few years ago and insists he has never encountered the sort of flak and hostility that Billy Connolly has mentioned in the past, despite Trainspotting's associations with Leith and Hibs.

"I'm not football literate at all," he says. "Maybe some Hearts supporters are seething as they walk down the street, but they haven't approached me yet … I get a lot more attention in America from people in the street or in a shop or wherever than I get in this country."

He is part of a very small group of actors, including most notably Tilda Swinton, who have managed to maintain Hollywood careers while basing themselves in Scotland. "Business-wise, it makes more sense for me to be based where the market is and the market is based in Los Angeles. But at this point in my life it doesn't suit me to be based there." His roots are in Scotland and his partner is the Edinburgh jazz singer Niki King.

"The quality of life that I have in Edinburgh is much preferable to me than any other places that I could be living, but it's a job and I've got to make it work," he says. "That means that I have got to spend time in Los Angeles, waiting for this film and that film and producers and casting directors. I've got to be present to an extent there. I've got to do the rounds. Obviously there will be lots of jobs that I miss out on."

He makes the point that most of his work comes from the US, but the films do not necessarily shoot there. Around the World in 80 Days shot all over the place, including Thailand, Black Hawk Down filmed in Morocco, and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, mainland US and England. But at the same time he has made more films in Scotland than Sean Connery and admits it was nice to be able to walk to work when he played a hotel concierge in David Mackenzie's recent offbeat sexual drama Hallam Foe, with Jamie Bell and Sophia Myles.

"I love the city. I love living there. I like it because you can walk around," he says. "To tell you the truth, the things that I've done in Scotland generally, things like Hallam Foe and 16 Years of Alcohol, are because the film-maker is a friend and they have asked me to come and do a little bit."

He hopes to be reunited with Irvine Welsh later this year on The Man Who Walks, an adaptation of a novel by Alan Warner, which could mark Welsh's debut as a director. In the meantime, he is about to continue his globetrotting with the play Damascus, which will take him off on tour to New York, Toronto and Moscow.

While on the subject of Welsh, I obviously have to ask if their is any update on the much-discussed film of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting sequel Porno. Is it ever going to happen? "Officially nobody has talked to me about it," says Bremner, sounding very official. And unofficially? He laughs. "And unofficially, nobody has talked to me about it."

• Fool's Gold is released on 18 April.