1. Childhood loss and loss of childhood

IT wasn't just that my dad died when I was eight years old, my mum had a massive nervous breakdown subsequently, from which she never really recovered. I was pretty much in the care of my sisters, who were so much older than me that they had their own families to look after. The next sibling to me was my brother, who was eight years older.

This meant I was on my own from a very early age and that has definitely marked me. It let me know that whatever you are, you are, in many ways, the sum of your own activities. You are who you are because of circumstances. We are reactive animals. We might think we’re proactive, but we’re not. Everything is a reaction to circumstances and conditions and those marked me for the good and the bad.

The good in that it made me self-dependent, but the bad in that it’s probably made me a little bit too self-dependent. Perhaps that means I’m not as trusting as I should be, but that hasn’t spilled over to my personal life. I’ve been married twice, and all my relationships have been good.

It did affect my ability to be a father at first, however. I was quite a young dad and having so little time with my own meant I didn’t really know what it was. It was a difficult thing for me to do.

2. Kristin Linklater and moving to London

THESE are completely linked. I had been blown away by the work of Kirstin Linklater, a voice coach who wasn’t that much older than me, but had opened my eyes to voice production and finding that centre of emotion.

I wanted to go where she was, which was LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art), so I auditioned there. Susan Williamson helped me prepare and I got in. Yes! I was going to be working with Kristin Linklater (above) – then she left and went to America, where she stayed for 50 years. She is still working, from Orkney now.

But the school was wonderful and I had a very happy time as a drama student there. I was only 17, so was a typical pimply smelly lad who never washed his clothes. They would stand up in a corner on their own, shouting at me “wash me, wash me!”.

And of course it was London in the 1960s, which was an astonishing time. This was a massive change in my life, fulfilling everything that had been building up for the past two years. It was only then that I realised that this is what I was going to do with my life.

3. The road to independence

I DON’T describe myself as a nationalist, but I do believe in independence. I think Scotland has been subjugated for far too long. It has been a long road. For many years I had a love-you, hate-you thing with Scotland. The Scotland I was going back to was, in many ways, recovering from the effects of two wars and had lost its character. Scots were the servants of their English masters, especially as soldiers. In the 1990s I wouldn’t have any truck with the Scottish National Party, in fact I was the voice of Labour during the 1997 General Election campaign. I was a hired hand, but don’t get me wrong it was something I believed in as I’m a socialist.

A lot of that was my sense of being a Brit and my own ambition. I bought into that a little bit, and then I realised it was all bollocks, something that doesn’t really exist.

I’m a Mick Mac, all my people came from Ireland. I stood back and saw the feudal nature of these islands and the divisions that have built up over centuries.

Then looking at the Blair government and the failing of formerly impressive figures like Gordon Brown who was affected by Blair’s hubris and probably some of his own. But then again, I was a friend of John Smith who was truly an amazing man.

It all didn’t fit and that’s why I came to independence.

4. America and identity

I WENT to America for the first time in the 1980s to do two plays. Suddenly I was in a society that didn’t ask which school you went to. All they were interested in was, could you do the work? In the UK I was still very much regarded as the “Scot” and it put me in a certain light. I found the American approach liberating and it made me realise how I had been trying to accommodate.

Tony Hopkins suffered the same thing. When we compared notes, it’s clear he went through this as a Welshman. I love London and it’s where I found my freedom as an actor but it always pissed me off. I had an extremely successful classical career but I never felt part of it.

So I decided to go to America in the 1990s. To me, it was partly finding myself and it was also a desire to do films. As a working-class boy, the cinema that was my thing. When I was growing up, Dundee had about 21 cinemas, two within minutes of where I lived. I could see as many as eight pictures a week.

It wasn’t the Ealing comedies I appreciated. I loved Jerry Lewis, I loved Abbott and Costello, and I loved the American dramas, with James Dean and Marlon Brando. My mother always pointed me towards Spencer Tracy because of the Catholic connection. He’s still my favourite actor of all time.

5. Seeking stability

IT might have been the 60s, a time of experimentation and freedom and all that, but I needed stability. I couldn’t be one of those pot-smoking, drunken, Withnail-type actors. With such a chaotic background, I needed structure and found it when I met my first wife Caroline. We went through some difficult times during our 18 years together, but we’re still great friends and had two wonderful children, Alan and Margaret.

She was upper class and had been a debutante, whereas I was working class. She introduced me to avocado, which I never knew existed. When we decided to marry I was 21 and at Birmingham Rep, so we decided to invite no-one. I wrote my mum a letter saying, ”by the time you receive this I’ll be married”. I was terrified really because my brother had got married very young and my mother would say to me, “Mind, you dinna get merried too early, no’ like yir daft brither!”

I needed the grounding but it grounded me too much. I think she suffered more from that than I did, because I was working. She was an actress but I had had a lot of success in the theatre.

We didn’t separate until the early 1980s. Even then I felt that my life was not quite formed and I really needed time on my own as I had been working hard at being the person I thought I had to be.

6. The Royal Shakespeare and the National Theatres

MY early success was mainly theatre-based. I had played major Shakespearean roles such as Iago and Mercutio, as well as Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, by the time I was 22, making my first appearance in London as Orlando in As You Like It at 21.

Things changed when I worked with the RSC and the NT in the early 1980s, however. I worked incredibly hard, had a successful time professionally, and when I was at the National I had a good relationship with a woman who was 26 years younger than me. She was wise and smart but I was definitely the paternal element and knew there was no future in it.

It was during this time that I went to Russia for the first time. The depth of work shone through, even in this Communist society, with all the problems and corruption that went with it. That elucidated so much for me and I became a great fan of Gorbachev (above) who set a path for them, even if they didn’t choose to follow.

To me, I believe that the cultural life of these countries is much more important than the political life. There’s something much deeper and purer – the political life just corrupts.

7. Time alone again

I HAD become involved with a woman shortly after my marriage ended, but I knew I didn’t want to get involved in anything too serious – it was too soon. It all ended horribly during the time I was away playing King Lear on a world tour. I didn’t have a home to go back to, so instead of coming back during breaks I would go on to the next place we were performing. Eventually when I came back, I knew this just wasn’t on. I had to get my sh*t together. I got a flat, learned to live the bachelor life, and concentrated on keeping in contact with my children at the time.

8. Teachers

I GOT word the other day that a teacher of mine had passed away. George Hackett was an art teacher who taught at many Dundee Roman Catholic schools, including mine, St Michael’s (above). He knew me and looked after me at school, because my schooling was pretty disastrous.

It had started pretty promisingly with the Marist Brothers, at my primary school, St Mary’s Forebank, but when they left I was high and dry.

But George Hackett and another teacher called Bill Dewar turned it around for me, Bill being the one who introduced me to the theatre.

When a former student of his was leaving a job at Dundee Rep, Bill encouraged me to apply for it. Both of those men had a huge influence in sustaining me.

9. Stability … again

I MET a wonderful half-German, half-Iranian actress called Nicole Ansari in Hamburg when I was working there. She brought absolute joy and still does. I love her very much. We’ve been together for 20 years, married for 18 of those, and had two sons, Orson and Torin, join us. We have our home in New York city but that’s the only thing spoiling that stability. I find life in America hard now ... the greed, personified by Trump. Brexit is a mess of course – even with problems a united Europe is better than a disunited Europe. I spend more time in Scotland now. I love it more and miss it more every time I leave.

10. Dundee Rep

THE day I went for an interview at Dundee Rep, there was a fight going on. It was between Nicol Williamson and a stage manager. I managed to get past them somehow, and reached the landing where Gawn Grainger (above), who is now married to Zoe Wannamaker, was standing smoking. He said: “Are you alright there darling?”

I thought to myself, “I’ve just seen a fight and someone called me darling – this is where I meant to be”. I started on my 15th birthday and had an incredibly happy time there for two years, when the building burned down on my 17th birthday.