THEY were calling card movies, the films that made his name, won awards and led eventually to Hollywood stardom.

Yet Ewan McGregor almost failed to make the cut in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, it has emerged.

Andrew Macdonald, who produced both movies, tells tonight’s The Years That Changed Modern Scotland that casting the actor for Trainspotting had been “very controversial” at the time.

“Lots of people thought Trainspotting had to be really grungy and they thought Ewan was too handsome, too attractive, too pretty,” says Macdonald.

He had previously encountered friction over McGregor in Shallow Grave. Channel 4, which commissioned the film, thought the young Scot and Christopher Eccleston were not well enough known for lead roles. It was the third person in their fictional flat-sharing trio, played by Kerry Fox, who saved them, and the picture. 

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“Kerry Fox had been in Angel at My Table and she was the one who got the film green lit really,” recalls the Glasgow-born filmmaker.

“Channel 4 had a real wobble about Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston at the time, which is a hard thing to believe and it’s how things change.”

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Ewan McGregor takes on career making role as Mark Renton in Trainspotting

Shallow Grave was a lucky film in other ways. Macdonald attended a Movie Makars film course in Inverness in the 1990s. One day David Aukin, the newly appointed head of Film4 visited.

Hearing the media executive had to leave early and was on his way to Inverness airport, Macdonald handed the taxi driver a fiver – “a lot of money in 1991” – to give the Channel 4 man the Shallow Grave script. To Macdonald’s delight, Aukin read it and invited him to London.

“I found out years later that David’s copy of the Guardian hadn’t showed up. On the plane he had nothing to read so he started reading the script.”

The third of four episodes in presenter Kirsy Wark’s documentary series covers 1992-2008, a time when Scotland’s cultural star was in the ascendant with movies such as Braveheart, Rob Roy, Trainspotting and Shallow Grave becoming domestic and international hits. Allied to this was a flourishing music and club scene.

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From London to California there was definitely a moment, says Macdonald, when it was “very cool” to be Scottish.

Among those interviewed for the programme is Aamer Anwar, now a major figure on Scotland’s legal scene, then a student at Glasgow University and a regular at The Sub Club in the city’s Jamaica Street.

Remembering his first dance at the venue, he says: “I’d been on demonstrations, I’d been an activist and all, but I’d never felt anything like that. It was the music.”

He credits the rave scene with having a positive effect on Scotland.

“People slag off the rave scene but it actually completely changed Scotland for the better. Prior to that it was all about alcohol, macho culture, it was segregated. It completely broke that down, it was good for the city, good for the country.”

The thriving cultural sector benefited the Scottish tourist industry. Braveheart alone generated £15 million. The Mel Gibson epic took £157 million at the box office worldwide, and Liam Neeson’s Rob Roy £24 million.

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Mel Gibson's Braveheart brought millions in tourism revenue to Scotland

The success of the play Black Watch is covered. Written by Gregory Burke and directed by John Tiffany, the drama about Scottish soldiers in Iraq was first performed at the Fringe in 2006.

After one performance in Glenrothes, a mother who had lost her son in Iraq thanked Tiffany “for giving my son back to me for two hours”.

A visibly moved Wark asks the director what soldiers made of the National Theatre of Scotland work. One told Tiffany: “I didn’t think anyone gave a **** about us and you’ve made me feel like they do.”

The standing ovation on the first night gave Tiffany a sense of the cultural phenomenon Black Watch was to become.

“I realised it wasn’t ours any more, it was Scotland’s.”

Based on interviews with soldiers, Black Watch went on to win a Herald Angel and four Olivier Awards. When it played in Brooklyn in 2007, the New York Times called it “one of the most richly human works of art to have emerged from this long-lived war”. In common with many who had seen the play, the reviewer, Ben Brantley, was moved to tears.

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The episode ends with the start of the global economic crisis and the Labour Government’s bail out of RBS, thus setting the scene for a tumultuous decade to come.

Tonight, BBC Scotland 10pm; repeated tomorrow 8pm; and on iPlayer