Restless native

He has made his name in Hollywood and on Broadway. Now Tom Conti returns to Scotland for some red-hot loving. NEIL COOPER finds out more Tom Conti was born in Paisley in November 1941. He studied acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow and went on to work in the West End of London and on Broadway. He won a Tony award in 1979 for Whose Life Is It Anyway? and was nominated for an Oscar for Reuben, Reuben. Other significant films in which he has featured include Heavenly Pursuits, Shirley Valentine and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence.

TOM CONTI just can't get away from sex. As Costas the horny Greek he wooed Shirley Valentine, in Reuben, Reuben he set hearts pumping as the crumpled Celtic poet and, in a new touring production of Last Of The Red Hot Lovers, he plays a frustrated husband desperate to sow his wild oats in a few fresh fields. The difference, this time, is that Conti's wife is coming along for the ride.

A typically dry Neil Simon tale, Last Of The Red Hot Lovers finds Barney, a fish restaurateur who embarks on a series of attempted seductions with wholly unsuitable women, including a hard-drinking man-eater, an out-of-work diva and his wife's best friend.

"Barney's dilemma," according to Conti, "is that he's only ever been with one woman, and is aching with curiosity to find out what it's like to be with someone else. So it's this journey that provides the entertainment of the evening. There's a very serious core to the play but, being an absolute master, Simon manages to put a humourous slant on it all."

Even more entertaining is the fact that Conti not only directs, but takes the lead playing opposite both his actress wife Kara Wilson and his newcomer daughter, Nina Conti.

"Kara and I have worked together many times," he says, "but this is the first time we've worked with Nina. Up to now she's worked on the Fringe, but she's very funny here."

Conti is curt, even a trifle brusque as he talks in a cultured - some might say affected - mix of cut-glass luvvie and leftover Glasgow. A true professional, everything about his current show is "great fun", while the potential egotistical maelstrom of working with his family was "tremendous". Inquiries of a more personal nature are simply diplomatically sidestepped.

As is so often the case with homegrown talent which leaves to make it on the international stage, Conti's career began at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre following three years studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), which was then still housed in Buchanan Street's Old Athanaeum building.

"It was easier in some ways being an actor then," he recalls, "because there was much more work. Despite the fact that there's been this explosion of television channels, the work is harder to find now. There was much more theatre then. There were repertory companies all over the country which allowed young actors to learn their craft, but that's all gone now."

Conti bemoans the state of drama training today, and says he encouraged his daughter to go to university rather than drama school. "All the big places now are wasting kids' time," he moans. "That wasn't the case in my day, for the Academy was a very practical place where we did a lot of plays, but," he says, sounding aghast, "Nina was at LAMDA [London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts] for two years and didn't get a proper part in a play once, which is just a waste of time and money."

LIKE many known actors, Conti receives letters from young drama school hopefuls who've been turned down for grants by local authorities, and are unable to pay their fees without passing round the begging bowl. "If the courses were one year long and more concentrated, it would help everybody out, especially these kids, who are all desperate," says Conti.

Despite such comments, Conti did, however, return to his alma mater at the end of 1998 for a try-out run of Jesus, My Boy, John Dowie's irreverent solo take on the Nativity, which moved to the West End shortly afterwards. Other than this and Heavenly Pursuits, the Glasgow-set film in which he appeared alongside Helen Mirren, Conti rarely works in Scotland.

During the 1960s, Conti became part of a creative team which included actress Hannah Gordon, broadcasting a pioneering arts programme across the then fledgling BBC2. "It was the first of its kind," he recalls. "We performed a mix of sketches, poetry and jazz, which, for technical reasons had to be broadcast from Glasgow, even though Glasgow couldn't receive BBC2 at that time."

The programme was spearheaded and produced by the influential but still largely unsung Scottish playwright George Byatt, with whom Conti and family became great friends, and whose personality and wisdom was such an inspiration to a generation of theatre practitioners interested in finding something more meaningful than standard rep fare.

Now in his late 50s, Conti remains one of a select band of Scottish actors to make the leap to London, Broadway and Hollywood without recourse to exploiting his nationality.

In 1979 he picked up a Tony award for his performance in Brian Clark's Whose Life Is It Anyway?, and four years later was shortlisted for an Oscar for his role as Gowan McGland in Reuben, Reuben. In a rare sighting of his nationality, Conti played a shambling, permanently pickled Scots poet who, in between nursing both writer's block and the bottle, proves to be a big hit with the ladies on the American lecture circuit.

A MORE recent transatlantic foray for Conti was playing alongside Jennifer Saunders as the parents of put-upon Helen Baxendale in the London wedding episodes of Friends. Other than that, though, Conti's on-screen time has been minimal of late as he has concentrated on stage work. Prior to Last Of The Red Hot Lovers' 11-week tour, Conti was performing the play Art in Sydney, and while future plans are under wraps, they will include high-profile work for both stage and screen. Conti is philosophical about the insecurities of the business he's worked in for what he refers to as "a very long time".

"You have to keep plodding on, and if things work out, they work out. If they don't, you have to move on to something else."

Last Of The Red Hot Lovers is at His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, from January 17-22 and the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, from January 31- February 5

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