TOMMY Flanagan takes to interviews the way ducks take to hot, sticky tarmac in the height of summer. It’s not that the actor is short of chat material. The former painter and decorator from Easterhouse has just completed seven seasons in US TV drama Sons Of Anarchy. He's done stints in crime series Gotham and the biopic of his rather incredible life has been chalked onto a Hollywood producer’s discussion slate. Even as he speaks, from his home in Beverly Hills, he’s waiting for the green light to talk about his upcoming role in a comic blockbuster.

But Flanagan has been burned on the backside by journalists so many times he can barely sit comfortably on his classic Harley. All too often, interviews set to discuss his latest project have resulted in headlines about the dark circumstances surrounding his becoming an actor in the first place. “I’m made out to be a violent Glasgow ned,” he once complained.

In his most recent film project – an arthouse piece called Winter which shows at the Glasgow Film Festival next week – he plays an alcoholic with mental illness. Before we get to the hugely demanding role however, we rewind to our first meeting, when Flanagan was part of Glasgow-based radical, experimental theatre group Raindog, founded by Robert Carlyle and Alexander Morton.

“God, that was 23 years ago,” he says, speaking from his home high in the Los Angeles hills. “We’re a couple of old b******s now, you and me.” Not me, Tommy. I’m Dorian Gray. “Me too,” laughs the 50-year-old. “Bring on the make-up department.”

The Raindog Tommy Flanagan was a mix of very funny and sometimes serious, confident and charismatic, yet at times introverted. Glaswegian, in fact. What’s refreshing is that Tinseltown hasn’t dulled his natural self-deprecation.

“I’ve seen Bobby [Carlyle] recently,” he offers. “We’ve both been working in Vancouver. And it’s funny thinking back to those Raindog days when neither of us had a pot to piss in.” He adds, with a chuckle; "I remember touring the Highlands in this old blue Transit van, but it had a broken window. It was so freezing inside, one of us had to hold a piece of cardboard up to stop the wind coming in.” His laughter goes up a scale. “I insisted on driving so I didn’t get the draught! Oh, the good old bad days. Or the bad old good days, depending on how you look at it. But I don’t regret any of it. And it was all about taking a chance in life, thinking is this what I really want to do? And I did. Acting is a love. It really is.”

The 27-year-old Tommy Flanagan could made have made a decent living as a painter and decorator and part-time DJ. The risk he took in acting was about revealing himself to the world.

“I was f***ing petrified of going up there on stage,” he recalls. “I had never been on stage in my life. The idea of acting had never entered my head before Bobby said, ‘Why don’t you think about joining Raindog Theatre Company?’ I said, ‘Are you f*****’ kiddin’ me?’”

The conversation is relaxed. Flanagan clearly feels on safe ground, safe enough to go back to the moment that changed his life when he was randomly attacked outside a Glasgow bar, slashed horribly and robbed. His face and his life were in pieces. Carlyle saw this and offered him a lifeline.

“We had known each other for years and years, but after the attack Bobby made the acting suggestion. And I thought, ‘What have I got to lose?’”

Four weeks later he was on the Raindog stage. What had Carlyle seen in the young Flanagan? “I guess I had too much personality, too much s**** going on in head,” he says, laughing. “God bless him.”

Two years later, he, and almost every other actor in Scotland, appeared in Braveheart. But Flanagan stood out. Mel Gibson told him to come to America. A year later, the Scot did, but the journey west was more about being with his then wife Rachel, an American film producer.

Regardless, success followed, with film roles in the likes of Face/Off and The Saint. The motor bike lover’s career came off the road at one point, and we come back to that. But first we talk of the darkness in his role in Winter. Flanagan plays Woods Weston, the father of two teenage sons who is lost in grief, his void filled with vodka.

We first see him as being soaked in self-pity, almost hopeless, but flashes of humour appear and he becomes a human being. As we warm to him, however, Weston inflicts pain on others, especially his two sons, with devastating consequences. The violence isn’t always physical, but psychological, and all the more powerful for being implicit.

What attracted the actor to the role (which Flanagan performs so convincingly) of this tortured soul? “There aren’t many giggles, in this film, that’s for sure,” he says, with some understatement, “but the director, Heidi Greensmith, pulled me in. She was so passionate and driven and she reminded me of Lynne Ramsay, who I worked with on Ratcatcher (in 1999). And the more Heidi re-wrote the script the better it got and I felt I had to do it.”

He adds, with a wry smile: “It probably cost me money to fly to London to make the movie, but we shot it in a month and it was a pleasure to do.”

His character is Scottish, a once-successful artist. Was there an initial fear the movie was playing on the Scots-drunk stereotype?

“No,” he says, emphatically. “That’s because I don’t know a family that hasn’t been affected by alcohol, and that’s not just in Scotland. It’s everywhere.”

Flanagan, sadly, didn’t have any difficulty researching the role of alcoholic. “I had my own troubles in the past. I was definitely boozing too much when I came to Los Angeles. I was fresh out of the box and I got caught up in the Hollywood party scene and I missed a lot of opportunities. But then I got myself right.”

Two marriages and a few unwelcome headlines later, Flanagan cleaned up his act and had a run of tough guy roles, from Charlie’s Angels to The Saint (playing a character called Scarface). But his own experience with alcohol wasn’t the only one which informed his latest screen character.

“My father died of alcoholism, and my aunts, my uncles on my father’s side. My dad left my mum with five kids in Easterhouse when we were kids. And that was all because of the booze. So I was always against alcohol, even though I drank my fair share back in the day.”

Was the experience of growing up with an alcoholic father a reason to want to tackle the subject, via this film? “It was in a way,” he says softly. “I knew the road my character was travelling in.”

You can see this in the performance; you can see the hurt in Flanagan’s face; you can see the huge oscillations in character – the happy, enigmatic drunk, the clown, who then takes off the mask and becomes a demon who can destroy little boys with a withering look or a dismissive gesture that stays with them forever.

We talk about the shared experience of alcoholic fathers who were never there, and when they were there, they were often cruel.

“That’s exactly it,” he says. “The debris these people leave behind them is unimaginable. And you never lose the effect of that sort of treatment.”

Did he ever have his On Golden Pond moment with his late father, the chance to know each other as older men?

“No, I didn’t,” he says, in an exasperated voice. “I was here at the time, driving down the Pacific Coast Highway when I got a phone call telling me he’d died. He was estranged my whole life, and I never thought he meant that much to me, because I didn’t really know the man, but when the phone rang I had to pull over. And I began greetin’ like a wean. Sobbin’ my f***in' heart out. And this shocked me.

“I used to resent him. I used to really hate him at times. But I guess I was greetin’ because I realised he wasn’t really a bad man. It was the booze that took over his life and we all took second place to the bottle. He’d get up at five in the morning to go to his work, but on a Friday he’d go off and you wouldn’t see him until the Monday; he’d spend the wages. He’d promise me, he’d promise all of us the night before, he swore to us, he’d come home. But he didn’t. He’d go to the shows or whatever. The b****** never did show up before Monday.”

His voice trails off. “The number of times I stood there waiting for him ...

“But what you also realise is, he was really a poor soul. He had five kids and no way of supporting them and he dived into a bottle to hide it. I was really sad I never had the chance to say goodbye. You learn from that.”

So you channel that experience into a character? “You do. Most of what acting is about is lying, but when it comes to a story like this it’s got to be about an emotional truth. And I love an opportunity like this to get in amongst it.”

His voice lifts and he offers a wry laugh: “I spent seven years in Sons Of Anarchy standing about like a lump of wood. That was such a different experience although by the time it came to Season Four I thought, ‘Just keep paying me. I’m happy'.”

The series was an international hit. But Flanagan had mixed feelings about the role. His character was called Chib, for a start. Flanagan didn’t miss the irony; he’d gone to Hollywood to forget the worst memories of Glasgow life and was playing the sort of creature who’d attacked him.

Did he adjust to Hollywood, a world renowned for telling people how wonderful they are, then asking them to change themselves, sometimes beyond recognition?

“I was definitely put in a little box,” he says of the bad-boy roles. “But to be honest, Hollywood is full of sh***. It’s full of people telling you how much they love you but I just think, ‘Oh, f*** off'. That’s why I stay high up in the hills and the only time I deal with these people is when I go to work and pick up the pay cheque.”

Did producers suggest he should undertake a cosmetic overhaul? “No, I think they were too scared of me,” he laughs. “I think my whole look, the TV tough guy image, pre-sold me, but in some ways it worked for me.”

Not half. But did he ever push his agent to try and land him the soft roles, the sitcom parts? “Oh, for sure. And I’ve got some nice stuff coming up including this big comic-book movie.”

Has he been surprised the work has been so continuous? “Yes, considering my start here. But then you get your act together and you realise Hollywood is just about business and so you blag your arse off and they pay you.”

Flanagan may be sanguine about the business but that’s not to say he doesn’t love the craft of acting. “When I did Gotham [he played a hitman called The Knife], the acting was so big. I said to the director, ‘Am I too big, here?’ But the director said, ‘No, Tommy. Unleash hell!’ And I thought, ‘Well, you asked for it!’ and I did. I went crazy, my arms were flaying around with knives like a madman. But you know, it was like doing theatre again and it brought back all the great times I had on the stage such as doing John Byrne’s Cutting The Rug with Bobby. Christ, we had such great fun.” His voice rises a beat: “Give me some of that again.”

Would he come back to Scotland to appear on stage? “I’d love to, mate. Me and Bobby working for the National Theatre of Scotland? I’d be up for that for sure.”

What you take from Tommy Flanagan is a man who's grasped what’s important in life. Mistakes? Sure. But he’s learned. “I love the work, and I love my life,” he says. “My wife Dina has been in my life for the past seven years and before that I would falter at times. But Dina has been massive for me. I stay away from the booze and now I have my daughter (Aunjanue) as well, and she’s incredible.”

Does he miss Glasgow? “I do, but I’ve been away for so long now. Being on Sons Of Anarchy has made it difficult to get home so what I do is I fly the relatives out to see me. My brother Danny has just left. He loves it. But I came back two years ago and on New Year’s morning I took a drive to Easterhouse. Thirty years on it’s still the same place. It was shocking. But I still have some good pals back at home. Here in Los Angeles I’m something of a hermit. I could count the real friends on one hand.”

Flanagan bought his mother a house in Glasgow (Betty Flanagan went on to get a degree after her children grew up) and his lifestyle suggests he’s earning more than he would have had he still been two-coat emulsioning someone’s ceiling.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel comfortable,” he admits. “There’s too much of a sense of insecurity in me, which goes back to being a kid. When you’re never sure if your old man is coming home on a Friday it never goes away from you. But for me to do the same thing to my daughter would be an outrage.”

Tommy Flanagan’s future looks bright. He hopes to come to Scotland with three different productions of his own, including a First World War drama. “I will definitely be starting a production in Glasgow in 2017.”

The only downside at the moment is the shoulder pain he’s suffering. “Some f***er knocked me off my motorcycle a few days ago,” he says, adding a couple of comic ‘Oyahs’ for effect. But that’s the only hint of self-pity about the man. Yet, what about his own, rather incredible life story? “I keep playing with the idea,” he muses. But I’m not sure about going back down that road just yet.”

He pauses, grins and adds in very gentle voice; “I may do it, but here’s the thing, mate; I think the story is still being played out as we speak.”

Winter screens as part of the Glasgow Film Festival on February 22 and 23 at 8.45pm and 8.30pm.

The Glasgow Film Festival opens this Wednesday and runs until February 28. The Sunday Herald is the festival's media partner http://visitgff.glasgowfilm.org/