It's the morning after the night before. The night being the British bow for Lynne Ramsay's RATCATCHER, opening the Edinburgh Film Festival. "That's not recording?" enquiries hung-over star Tommy Flanagan, pointing at my cassette recorder. "It's too early in the morning for that," he groans, adjusting his blue-tinted shades.

Flanagan plays the alcoholic Celtic-supporting father to a young boy, overcome with guilt at the drowning of his young friend. Flanagan, who was raised in Glasgow's Easterhouse, found the experience of filming painful, reminding him of his own childhood - abandoned, along with his four siblings, by his father at an early age.

"Da reminded me of my father, a typical Glasgow father who would rather be in the pub with his friends than at home with his family. He wasn't as savage as my father, though," says Flanagan, his Scots accent at best thick. "Doing this film was painful. In some ways it was exorcising my demons." Set during the infamous refuse strikes of the 1970s, Flanagan was also surprised at how Ramsay's script brought these memories flooding back. "I remember it really well. You'd see rats all over the city, and the bin bags would be piled up a mile high.

When I read the script, I kept saying 'My God I remember this!'" LA-based for the past three years, Flanagan, 32, started his professional career as a local DJ - eventually to stop after he was attacked outside a nightclub, leaving him with a distinctive scar across his face. "I walked out with my record boxes. I was wearing this leather jacket and these guys commented on it. Next thing, I was cut, scarred and stuff. I nearly died then."

Despite the disfigurement, Flanagan joined the Raindog Theatre company, coerced into joining by one Robert Carlyle. Flanagan notes "I came back to life" but admits theatre was a frightening medium to begin plying his trade. "The night I was first on stage was more terrifying than being cut. Your heart stops. But because of my scars I was so pissed with life that I threw myself into it one hundred per cent. It was the worst and the best thing that happened to me." His thespian bent soon gave way to a film career when Mel Gibson came to town to make BRAVEHEART. Small roles soon followed in Hollywood biggies THE GAME, THE SAINT (to which he makes a gagging sound) and FACE/OFF ("John Woo understand me better than the Americans!" he notes).

He's just completed SUNSET STRIP, a '70s rock'n'roll movie with Anna Friel, in which he plays the rock star. "Everybody wants to be a rock star," he laughs. "They wanted me to base it on Mick Jagger or Keith Richards. But I did my own thing and they were delighted with it. Every scene I did is still there, which is fantastic." He's also wrapped Ridley Scott's GLADIATORS, in which he plays Russell's Crowe's "skinny" best friend and servant, yet another film that has kept Flanagan away (in Malta) from his homeland.

But, with a move back to London imminent, the prodigal son is coming home - and not before time. He tells me he's a Celtic fan, but then much to his embarrassment calls the beloved game 'soccer'. "I've been in America too long," he groans. "I just want to go back to the UK to let people know I'm here and I'm alive. I want to work in Scottish and English film. I want to come home. I adore Scotland, which I thought I'd never say. I miss the rain and I want to be miserable."