"IT WAS the most anarchistic shoot I've ever been on," David Hayman says now. "Anarchy in front of the camera and behind. Sex, drugs and rock and roll was part of it and we sort of lived the lifestyle. Everyone inhabited their characters. It was extraordinary. I've never known anything like it."

It is 40 years now from the first summer of punk and 30 years since the film Sid and Nancy, Alex Cox's punk memorial to the death cult of Sid Vicious, in which Hayman plays Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, was released. As the former is celebrated in broadsheet magazine spreads, the latter is back in cinemas and on DVD with Roger Deakins's cinematography buffed to a glorious sheen.

Cox's film, which stars Gary Oldman as Sid and Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen, is half punk pantomime, half anti-heroin advert. It is full of the director's typical messy energy, lurching rhythms and cartoony excess, shuttling between clanking wrong notes and grubby grace notes.

Hayman hasn't seen the movie since it came out but the shoot remains fresh in his mind.

"It was genuinely creative to be part of. It wasn't like shooting a film. It was like being a rock band on tour. We shot in London, we shot in Paris, we shot in New York, we shot in Los Angeles. It was like being rock stars on tour."

His memories of the experience take in both the thrilling and the gruelling. "Alex Cox, I love him dearly, but he believes actors should be kept starved and naked in a cage and let out once a day to be abused in front of a camera and then thrown back in the cage again."

It did get to the point in Los Angeles where some of them had had enough. "They were working long, long hours and the conditions weren't brilliant so people were revolting towards the end. They'd had enough of the pressure and they were checking out of the hotel and ordering cabs to go to LAX a week before the film finished."

Whatever its flaws, the film was a vehicle for new faces (yes, that is Kathy Burke; yes that is Courtney Love) and also helped establish Gary Oldman as a star in the making.

"You knew he had star quality," Hayman recalls. "You'd be sitting at the side of the set having a fag with him and they'd call him and when he stood up as he walked towards the set his physical mannerisms and his physical gait began to change as he got into the character of Sid.

"I think he's one of the unsung heroes of British acting. He really does inhabit his characters.

"I've worked a couple of times with Daniel-Day Lewis and he's another superb actor and Dan gets into his character in a completely different way. You don't have small talk with Dan on set. You don't say 'Hi Dan, how are the kids?' Dan's already in the zone.

"In those days Gary could get into the zone, but not completely so you could sit on set and have a chat about all sorts of things." (Cox has revealed that the casting of Vicious came down to a choice between Oldman and Day Lewis. He has also said that the only reason he wanted to make the film was because Hollywood were planning to make a Sid and Nancy movie starring Rupert Everett and Madonna, which in retrospect sounds perversely appealing.)

To play the part of McLaren, Hayman says he watched documentary after documentary, "to get the accent, to get the mannerisms, to decide how I was going to curl my hair."

What was his take on the man? "He was an extraordinary individual, extraordinary ego and very vibrant and dynamic creative force. He created people like the Sex Pistols and the Adam and the Ants. He made that album Duck Rock [in which McLaren mashed up hip hop and South African rhythms] that was ahead of its time I think. He had a real genius."

Not everyone thinks so, of course. John Lydon has always portrayed him as a total chancer. "I think he was a chancer and an ace manipulator, but at the same time he was a great creative force."

Hayman was meant to meet the real McLaren on set for a making of documentary. The idea was to film a shoot-out between the real Malcolm and the film Malcolm. But it got scratched when McLaren saw some footage from the film and didn't like it. "So that was me chucked," Hayman laughs.

The actor is going to introduce a screening of the film at the Glasgow Film Theatre. So all these years on what's he expecting to see?

"It's not so much a biopic of Sid and Nancy themselves. It's a very powerful anti-drug film.

"That was certainly my reaction; 'Wow. If ever there's a film that's going to put you off drugs …' I'm not sure that's what Alex Cox started off thinking he was going to make but that's how it certainly turned out."

Sid and Nancy screens at Edinburgh Filmhouse today at 1.30pm and 8.40pm. David Hayman will introduce the film at the Glasgow Film Theatre on August 28. It is also screening at the Eden Court Inverness (August 26-27) and the DCA Dundee on September 10. The film is out on special edition DVD/Blu-ray on August 29.