WHEN someone who is not a Hollywood A Lister can reproach Indiana Jones, and get away with it tells you two things.

The first is this person must have the professional respect of Harrison Ford.

And the second is the American actor and Star Wars legend must have really liked his Scots acting colleague, George Anton.

Blairgowrie-born George recalls his time spent on the set of $150m submarine thriller K19: The Widowmaker, the 2002 movie which also starred Liam Neeson.

“I was a bit in awe of the cast, and the situation,” recalls George, who is set to star in upcoming Citizens’ Theatre play, This Restless House.

“There I was between takes sitting next to the man who played Indiana Jones and Harrison was so cool. He didn’t talk a lot.

“Meantime, I’d sit and be quite and wait to be handed a script for a scene, which I’d memorise and do it.

“And for some reason, maybe because he liked this quiet, Harrison sort of gravitated towards me. Then one day he said ‘Hey George, are you doing anything tonight?’ I said no, and he said, ‘Well come by my hotel, I’ve got some people coming around.’

“And I did, and for the next five months I was going everywhere with Harrison, in his 4x4 at night, being taken to his parties in New York, being flown around on his private jet.

“One day I found myself walking down Soho in New York and I had to pinch myself it was actually happening.”

But it wouldn’t compare with his later film experience of working on BBC Scotland’s River City, in rain-drizzled Dumbarton?

“Not quite,” says George, grinning. “Although working with Gina (Libby McArthur, he played Greg McManus) was terrific. But what the Harrison film reinforced for me was that we’re all jobbing actors.

“About three or four months into the job, we were filming a really tricky shot, with the camera coming up behind us.

“Now, Harrison is a very gifted technical actor, he really understands film, and during the third take he came over and said ‘Just feel the camera, George.’

“But I then heard myself saying (tetchy voice) ‘I know, Harrison. I’m trying to do that!’ And I could hear the rest of the crew take a deep breath, thinking ‘He’s just told off Harrison Ford’.”

How did the American film legend react? Exactly as you would hope.

“Later he came up to me and said, ‘We are still alright for tonight, aren’t we George?’ And that just highlighted how lovely the man was.”

George isn’t playing a lovely man in his latest stage production. Far from it. He is playing Agamemnon in This Restless House, a new trilogy of plays by acclaimed writer Zinnie Harris, inspired by Aeschylus’ Greek tragedy The Oresteia.

It tells of the homecoming of the warrior king who has been off committing atrocities for ten years.

Meantime his wife Clytemnestra (Pauline Knowles) is planning his murder, partly as revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter, and also because she was being comforted by his cousin in her husband’s absence.

“The way I imagine the character is we know he has killed his daughter in a sacrifice, and I want to think of him as someone who has to come to terms with this.

“Director Dominic Hill has come up with a context of the Balkans around twenty years ago.

“Agamemnon is a complicated man, a state-sanctioned killer confounded by his own hubris, which destroys him in the end. And it’s great to play such a character, but what’s more important is being part of this whole project. It’s like we’re staging a book rather than a play.”

George, who has appeared in a string of film and TV productions including The Bill and 2,000 Acres of Sky, says the play is relevant today.

“This is a story about families, albeit in extremis because you can often turn on the telly or read a newspaper and see a story about a father or a mother who has killed a daughter, families tearing themselves apart.

“We also see it where religion is used to justify nastiness. These themes don’t change.”

The actor adds; “The Greek Tragedies were the first plays, and theatre was an outlet for society in which things could be said about the gods, or the rulers and everyone sat together equally.

“The power of that still remains.”

George, who has achieved great crit for theatre roles such as Hamlet and Confessions of A Justified Sinner, adds; “I think one of the themes in the play is the loneliness, people left alone and isolated, love has been held in check.”

It’s work such as the role of Agamemnon which reminds George why he loves his work. But he never grew up in a theatrical backdrop.

“My dad was a mechanic and my mum a bank officer,” he recalls.

“What happened was my dad used to love to watch French films and when I was eight or nine he’d let me stay up and watch the likes of Francois Truffaut movies, and the awareness of acting sort of clicked with me then.”

He adds, grinning; “I thought ‘I want to be able to lie really truthfully’.”

George has done ever since, going off to drama school in London.

Later he asked his dad why he’d developed a love for European cinema. “He said ‘The films never talked down to me.’ And I get this, They were about relationships, families, like the British kitchen sink films, these movies spoke to working class people.

“My dad could connect with them.”

George went on to join the Blairgowrie Players, moved on to Scottish Youth Theatre and was launched in to the Royal Shakespeare Company by acclaimed director Danny Boyle.

He found himself in illustrious company, working with Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale.

“He laughs; “I’m the Zelig of actors. I’ve worked with everyone.”

He moved back to Scotland four years ago.

“My wife is from Nottingham, but when pregnant with our third child she said she didn’t want to bring up another kid in London.

“We lived in Bermondsey and went to a very nice school, but my wife, who is a TV and film writer, wanted to come to Scotland and actually announced she’d always wanted to live in Scotland.

“I asked ‘Where?’ and she said Blairgowrie, because that’s the only place she knows.

“But it’s worked out really well, with me having family there. My dad has dementia and my mum was on her own.

* This Restless House trilogy also stars Keith Fleming, Anita Vettesse George Costigan, Adam Best And Cliff Burnett. The Citizens’ Theatre, from April 22 – May 14.