FILM companies offer up serious development money these days only if the likes of DiCaprio and Diaz are not only attached but nailed and superglued to the project.

As for a first-time director looking for a few million to finance his dream? No chance.

That's why when congratulations are offered to Scots-born writer-director Shan Khan on landing the money to make his race-hate thriller, Honour, you expect the cliched response "I've been really lucky". Not a bit of it. Khan says he would have made the movie anyway. And here's the thing: this isn't arrogance speaking. He's merely declaring intent.

"I've always been into films," he says, smiling. "My dad had a video shop in Carluke, and I loved films so I'd have gotten a camera and, with my little brother helping me, we'd have made this movie somehow, using guerrilla filming [shooting on location without permission]."

Khan-do should be the writer's nickname.

Growing up in South Lanarkshire, the charismatic young performer studied acting at Glasgow's RSAMD and was quickly enticed into a pop star career by former Wet Wet Wet manager Elliot Davis. When the needle broke on that record, he threw himself back into acting.

Initially, Khan was successful, landing the lead in Channel 4's 1997 showcase drama, Bombay Blue, filming in India for six months. But, on set, he didn't just act. "I used the time to learn everyone's trade - writing, directing, production," he recalls. "There were some really talented people on the production."

But despite landing the lead - and achieving great reviews - the acting offers that followed were risible. "It was parts such as mini-cab drivers and all that kind of chutney," he says, his voice reflecting the disappointment of the time.

"Then a Rebus offer came along to play the 'lead villain'. But it turned out to be the role of 'Indian Waiter' - with three lines to speak. I came to realise television just doesn't hire Asian actors. It isn't a liberal world."

The glass ceiling was three metres thick. Khan, now living in London and married, was skint. Meantime, his drama college contemporaries - Gerard Butler, Tony Curran and Cal Macaninch, whom he'd kept in touch with in London (playing in the Scots' actors' football team) - were all enjoying soaring careers. On Hogmanay of 1997, the friends went off to celebrate at Drumnadrochit, yet Khan barely had the train fare to the Highlands.

"I knew then my acting career was over," he admits. But what to do? Bombay Blue had opened a new world.

He figured he'd write a movie, something he and his younger brother could work on together. And he came up with Office, based on a phone box near where he lived in King's Cross in London, where drug dealers did their business.

"As I was writing, in August 2000, I saw an ad for the Verity Bargate Award, a playwriting competition, with a £1500 prize. But the deadline was the following day. So I took my film script and 22 hours later turned it into a play."

Meantime, still desperately low on cash, Khan made his way to the Edinburgh Festival to "sell himself" as a writer, with no success.

Six weeks later, he took a call from the Soho Theatre telling him he'd won the writing prize. A year to the day later, his play opened at the Edinburgh International Festival.

"This time round I was picked up by a limo and had a flat overlooking the Festival, with a spiral staircase. At least now I could call myself a writer."

He was. He wrote Gaddafi: A Living Myth for the English National Opera, and worked on the likes of River City, The Vice and his 2005 Edinburgh International Festival theatre success Prayer Room.

In 2009, Khan wrote Honour, a crackling story of "revenge, religion and family betrayal"; all very Godfathery. It tells of a white bounty hunter (Paddy Considine) hired by an Asian family to go in search of a runaway Asian girl. "You can't imagine Asians hiring white supremacists to kill Asian girls but it's all a true story because there's a perverse relationship going on in Britain between Asians and white Nazis," he offers.

Khan revealed his characteristic cojones when he insisted on directing his own movie.

But he reveals more of his character when he explains why the £3 million development money secured was a "mixed blessing".

"If I'd made it for less, I'd have insisted on hiring new talent," he says. "I love the idea of giving people a chance."

He adds, grinning; "I'd rather have been Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen than Manchester United."

Honour (15), also starring Aiysha Hart, is out now on DVD