HIBS-DAFT actor Dougray Scott has been given an unlikely helping hand by Hearts supremo Vladimir Romanov.
The controversial Lithuanian businessman jumped to the aid of the Mission Impossible star after filmmakers struggled to find a suitable location for the forthcoming movie, New Town Killers.
Set in Edinburgh, the low budget production needed to shoot important scenes around the capital.
Romanov stepped in to provide the former Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters, which he bought for a cool £20 million in 2007, at a cut-price rate.
The movie has been written and is directed by former Skids frontman Richard Jobson.
Help from Romanov
He said: “This was my third movie that I had made in Edinburgh so I had to try and work out a different way to shoot the city.
“I had not used the city at night before so we shot almost all of it at night time and, of course, we went on to the rooftops.
“We got help from Mr Romanov, who has an amazing building he is about to turn into a hotel.
“He was great, he let us use his building for five different sets in the film and all the rooftop sequences.
“Mr Romanov’s people liked the idea of the movie, realised we did not have very much money and charged us what was appropriate for insurance and health and safety and let us get on with it.”
Dougray reckons the banker is the most violent, despicable and psychopathic character he has ever played.
He said: “His philosophy seems to be ‘I can have whatever I want, because I can’. There appears to be no comeback for him.”
One of his characters most extreme acts of violence comes when he hurls a scalding pot of tea over a pregnant girl.
But, Dougray was worried about the effect the scene might have on the young actress.
He said: “It was a nasty scene but very effective. It is a vile moment and so before we did the scene I said to her to remember that this was all just pretend.
“I had this terrible vision of boiling water being accidentally left in the pot and throwing that over her.”
Dark drama
Romanov’s former-RBS building has lain empty for the past two years following the purchase and was used to film many of the interior sequences for the film.
Jobson added: “There were so many different locations made in the building – we used every part of it. It was like a film studio. We couldn’t have made it without him.”
The dark drama sees Dougray team up with Monarch of the Glen star Alastair Mackenzie to play two private bankers who arrange a dangerous game of hide and seek with desperate youngsters.
Jobson said he was inspired to make the film by the ‘forgotten’ people who live in the capital’s underbelly.
He said: “Although there is an element of hope in the film it does show it as a pretty malevolent, nasty, vicious place.
“There are clearly a lot of kids with social problems but they have the same dreams and ambitions as you and I do – they just don’t know how to construct it around them.
“I realized that they see themselves as not part of the world and that the world looked on them in a away as if they were invisible.
“That enraged me and I wanted to tell that story but not as another of those films that are set on a council estate.
“So instead I set the story within a chase movie that is exciting to watch.”
New Town Killers is released on June 12.
