He’s 35 and has made 13 films, including Mission: Impossible II, but remains an unknown quantity. Standing next to Kate Winslet at the Enigma premiere in Edinburgh he was all over the front pages. He was back in the tabloids once again when they reported on the break-up of his marriage to Sarah Trevis, a costume designer. After a five-year relationship, they married in April of last year (Ewan McGregor was best man), and have three-year-old twins, Gabriel and Eden.

Winning Pool Performance

Starring opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II (he got the job after beating the former Mr Kidman at pool) raised his global profile, but it seems to have been his performance as Prince Charming to Drew Barrymore's Cinderella in 1998's Ever After that earned him a special place in the heart of young female America that has resulted in a rash of internet sites dedicated to him.

He’s passionate about football. His father Allan, whio died in 1977, once played for Queen’s Park on the right wing 'He was fast as anything, very jinky' Scott junior reports, in a Fife accent as opposed to the sanitised Scots we are used to on screen. However, it was his dad’s later occupation as Scottish rep for Lec refrigerators that gave young Scott -then known as Stephen- a solid grounding in preparation for roleplay

Sales Inspiration

'Watching my father as a salesman was my greatest inspiration as an actor,' he says. 'The dressing up that he used to do. The intimate detail. How he used to get up in the morning and have his shave in his vest, then wash. Then he'd go upstairs and start putting his clothes on. He used to tie his tie in the downstairs mirror, make sure it was just so, put his hat on, smile and then go out to the car. Whatever was going on in his life, he had to go through that door and make a sale. His commission was our livelihood.'

The pose, the calculated smile, how to sell yourself -- these are the things that Scott learned growing up. A self-confessed 'outsider' at Auchmuchty Secondary School in Glenrothes, 'a very grey place, with an authoritarian headmaster', where the 'teachers were patronising and orientated towards the middle-class kids', he fell into acting as a kind of escapism.

He had wanted to be a professional footballer but wasn't skilled enough. His second choice was a cowboy, but Fife -- although quite good for last-chance saloons -- has always been a bit short on Mexican bandits and cattle rustlers. Pretending to be other people was a way of legitimising his fantasy life. Then, at 14, he read Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman and everything fell into place.

'Of course,' he says, 'when you decide that you want to be a professional actor, it is no longer a game. It becomes more like an obsession about being truthful. It's about mapping out people's lives. I'm not escaping from my own life, because I like my own life, but I am really intrigued by how other people see the world. I want to look at the world through their eyes. I'm not a mad person and I can't explain why I like it, but I do.'

Against All Odds

Enigma adapted from the novel by Robert Harris, is based in fact. Between 1939-45, thousands of men and women worked secretly at Bletchley Park, near London, trying to crack the Enigma code but unable to tell anyone about their ordinary heroism. The odds against success were 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. Even when they triumphed, shortening the war by an estimated two years, the Official Secrets Act meant they could not talk about it until decades later. Churchill called them 'the geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled'.

While preparing for Enigma, Scott met some of the former Bletchley staff. His research also took him to Oxford University, where Professor Jon Chapman, an expert on codes, helped him to get his head around the idea -- crucial to playing Jericho -- that numbers can be beautiful, that in maths, truth and beauty are the same. 'There was just so much to understand,' Scott admits. 'This was the most difficult part I ever played.'

Thorough, Professional

'I found Dougray amazingly thorough and professional in his preparation,' says Chapman. 'He had read several books on codes and the Enigma machine before I met him, and already had quite a good understanding of it all. He quizzed me about what it was like to be a mathematician, how we think about problems, go about our research, that sort of thing. He was very interested in using me not just to find out about codes but also to find out about mathematicians.'

Chapman also taught Scott the knack of solving cryptic clues in crossword puzzles. Tom Jericho is the sort of person who completes the Times crossword between forkfuls of powdered egg, so the actor felt he needed to learn this skill. Now he claims that even after filming was finished he remained obsessive about numbers and codes. He was forever picking up papers and excitedly completing the crossword.

‘A’ List Next?

So, will Enigma propel Scott into the A-list? According to Mick Jagger, producer of the film, 'when we cast him we felt he was on the verge of enormous fame' but the actor himself is -- inevitably -- more reserved. 'I don't feel anything. It's hard to say the right thing because you get accused of being f**king coy. But I'm not. I enjoy acting and try to avoid all the rest of the stuff because I want to have a quiet life.'

Perhaps, but one suspects not for much longer.