Dream Boy turned actor

naturally and thereafter respond to the gentle nudging which is

Forsyth's style of directing. And so it was that the youthful Peter

Capaldi discovered there was an actor's life for him.

He was just out of Glasgow School of Art, fronting a rock band with

other ex-students called the Dream Boys, as singer and stand-up comic,

doing numbers with titles like I Want to Be a Melody in the Symphony of

Life and Bella Lugosi's Birthday. The anonymous figure who had been

lurking in the shadows of the Mars Bar near St Enoch Square emerged and

asked him if he would like a part in a film. That was how Capaldi came

to be co-starring with Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster in Local Hero.

At the time he did not realise that Forsyth had seen in him the

potential for playing ''good-natured ganglies.'' He got the role of

Danny Oldsen -- ''A bit of a prat which meant he was easy for me to

play.'' But at the Fort William location Lancaster saw far greater

potential than just mere ganglies. During an interview he told me he

thought Capaldi was a natural actor who would go far.

Since then there has been the maturing of Peter Capaldi, from the

good-natured gangly of Local Hero to the international nasty of the

four-part TV thriller series Chain currently going out on Tuesday

evenings at prime, post-watershed time of 9.30.

The time is important as it has enabled incidents such as the cutting

off of the nipples of a man who has fallen foul of some very powerful

financial manipulators prematurely into fraud, 1992 style.

Capaldi is McRae, on the side of the law, but none the nicer for that.

A financial whizzkid with shoulder-length curls who has made a lot of

money as the result of a computer-like brain, he is

poacher-turned-gamekeeper, finding an interesting mental challenge in

taking on a fraud case involving murders, beatings, multi-million pound

swindles. And computers, computers, computers.

Viewers and critics have been split in their attitude to the

deliberately fragmented, complex, and cynical plot. Some say rubbish;

the rest say brilliant. Says Capaldi: ''Someone wrote that in this genre

the writer is doing the the right thing if you can't understand it.

Because if you can understand it from the word GO, then there's no

distance to go with it. The shooting was done a year ago and I did not

fully understand it until I saw a couple of preview episodes recently.

It was all made terribly out of sequence. I had to prepare very

accurately and precisely for it. On a typical day, the first scene in

the morning would be from episode three and after lunch there would be a

scene from episode one. I had little notebooks full of instructions to

myself.''

Pre-Local Hero, Capaldi was developing in graphic design. He did

illustrations for BBC Scotland TV on a freelance basis from time to

time, among them a drawing of Vivien Heilbron for the title sequence in

the Grassic Gibbon drama adaptation of Cloud Howe. He also did funny

drawings for the first series of A Kick Up the Eighties. And he did

things like comic greetings cards which was fun because he also dreamed

up the jokes.

After Local Hero he went to London because he couldn't get acting work

in Scotland. He couldn't get work in London for long enough, lived

frugally, renting a room in someone's house at Kensal Green. He remained

there until three years ago before moving into Tottenham with girlfriend

Elaine Collins, previously Willie Melvin's TV girl friend in City

Lights, currently in Toronto with the Tron production of The Guid

Sisters. Wedding bells are imminent.

His London breakthrough was at the Young Vic where he auditioned for

Frank Dunlop, now director of Edinburgh Festival -- ''Just tiny parts,

but it was great because it was like learning from scratch. Getting into

Local Hero was great, too, but it just taught me that I didn't really

know anything about acting.'' He did the usual things that a young actor

did to eat, if he was lucky: took bit parts in TV series like Crown

Court and Minder.

The first indication the mass public had that the boy Capaldi (to use

a current football term) had grown up was when there he was co-starring

with Stewart Granger, another international star, in a television

adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Story of a Recluse. This was

a powerful performance and showed that the physically lightweight

Capaldi could handle heavy acting. He was a gangly no more.

He has a sensitive, mobile face that adapts to a wide range of roles.

He is still unduly modest about his own talents, plays them down as they

never reach the standards for which he is looking. The fact that he is

now automatically offered leading roles he attributes to the fact that

he has got older (he is now 32). Though he is unassuming, an

undercurrent of anger about the way so many actors are treated is never

far from the surface. He admits to having been lucky, but is annoyed

when he sees actors with God-given gifts he regards as being far greater

than his having to scrimp and scrounge because the phone no longer

rings.

Similarly with young actors trying to get into the business he sees

injustice -- ''Now if they get just one job they are immediately taxed

on a PAYE basis. Previously actors were on Schedule D, regarded as

freelances, which meant that they could pay in two-yearly instalments.

The average theatre wage is about #130 a week. So if you are getting

taxed on that and coming out with about #80 or #90 it is difficult to

live.

''The Government gives very little incentive to the arts. It just

means that it is going to be more and more difficult for working-class

people to get into acting. As Denis Lawson has said, we will be going

back to the fifties when the only people who could afford this kind of

work were debs and members of the aristocracy. I now get paid a good

wage but there are a lot of people out there who are just getting

absolute peanuts.''

Since his Young Vic days he has kept a lot of distinguished company.

With Mark McGann he played one of the twins in Willy Russell's Blood

Brothers, a version that toured and stopped at the King's, Glasgow,

something that pleased him greatly as it brought out in force his local

fans of relatives and friends. At the Half Moon Theatre in London's east

end he played the hero against Daniel Day-Lewis's Dracula. That was

before Day-Lewis went on to win the Hollywood Oscar for My Left Foot. In

the film Dangerous Liaisons he had a fairly substantial role as the man

servant of John Malkovich who is being hailed by the American critics as

an actor with the potential of a Marlon Brando.

He has struck up a relationship with the Hampstead Theatre, London,

after doing Valued Friends last year. It went on to win the best comedy

and best new play Olivier awards. He completed the filming of Chain and

returned there at the end of the year running into the beginning of this

year, appearing with Tom Conti in the play Treats by Christopher

Hampton, who wrote Dangerous Liaisons. It was directed by Geraldine

McEwan (Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, National Theatre actress etc etc) in

only her second stint as a director.

He has now learned to switch easily between Scottish, English, and

American accents and at the moment is in constant demand. In the can and

due out in February is a Screen 2 production, Do Not Disturb, the first

screenplay by Timberlake Wertenbaker, who wrote the highly acclaimed

stage play, Our Country's Good. He is currently working on an ITV

adaptation of a Ruth Rendell murder mystery, Some Lie, Some Die, playing

the part of a pop star.

It will be completed at next month's Knebworth Festival in which the

Rolling Stones are taking part. With a bit of clever editing, it will

look as though the thousands of fans will be there to hear him. All the

clues to the mystery will be in the song he sings.

Capaldi confesses to being sick of acting in one major respect. ''What

annoys me about it is that your fate is always in somebody else's hands.

It's always up to somebody else to decide whether or not they want you

in their show and so the majority of actors have to play out a waiting

game. The constant fear is that it could all end tomorrow. From now on I

want to take greater control of my own career. I want to direct and I am

writing all the time. I have written three full-length screen plays, all

of which have been picked up and looked at by producers and are still

being considered for production. There are a great many hurdles to get

over before a script develops into a completed product. I think I would

only direct myself in order to save money because I wouldn't be my ideal

choice.

''I have now reached the age when it is time to make a move. I don't

want to find myself at the age of 60 waiting by the telephone for

someone else to decide if I am capable of being in what might be a

crummy TV production.''