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I’ve been aware of Andrew Carnegie since childhood.

When I asked my mother for money, she would always respond with, “Who do you think I am, Andrew Carnegie?”

I became reacquainted with him, and his effect on the commercial life of United States, during the filming of in Pittsburgh in 1996.

As an actor, Carnegie’s character very much rang true to me: the struggle he had as a child very much reflected the struggle I had as a child.

Becoming the man he became clearly required enormous self-determination — a highly motivated individual with ambition who could and would create great things. In my younger life, I was very much driven by the same resolve.

The appeal of Carnegie and his complexity lies in his whole attitude towards his business acumen and financial success.

He was an endless seeker of information, a great believer in the power of education and a master philanthropist.

He believed firmly against the notion of inherited wealth. He was a fierce capitalist with deep social and democratic tendencies.

Although he loved his country, his sense of deprivation and loss of control – along with seeing how his father struggled to adjust to the American way of life – greatly motivated his proactivity.

Andrew Carnegie's birthplace - Dunfermline, Scotland

I can relate to this, having lost my father at the age of 8.

I moved from being lower middle class to a class of extreme poverty and realised extremely quickly that my destiny was very much in my own hands.

I believe this to be a bond that Andrew and I share.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but the egalitarian-based culture represented in American movies influenced me strongly and had an impact on my ambitions.

Anything was possible and, somehow, this rubbed off on me in a very profound way.

Latterly, I realised that both Carnegie & I were products of a feudal society.

For example, English cinema never appealed to me because in its essence it propagated the nature of feudalism, whereas American cinema offered an entirely different perspective.

It was that perspective which drove my initial desire to be an actor in films — and that has never left me, even throughout my years of working in theatre.

It certainly created an ambitious drive in me back then to get out of my situation.

I will always be grateful to two people in my life: Bill Dewar & George Hackett who taught me at St Michael’s Junior Secondary School in Dundee.

These two men saw how misplaced I was in the school system and identified a potential in me that the school system would have otherwise overlooked.

I suspect that Carnegie had patrons, for example George Lauder, his uncle.

Young Andrew Carnegie

He was heavily influenced by his mother and I think his father played a formative role in the development of his humanity, his philanthropy and his fight against the war.

I think that, like any good Scot, Carnegie understood that greatness is not the goal. Instead, to him his work was its own reward, regardless of the financial incentive.

Carnegie was the foundation of American industry.

Statue of Andrew Carnegie, Pittencrieff Park, Chambers Street, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

He was the Bill Gates of his generation and I believe he laid the foundations of modern capitalism.

As a great philanthropist, however, I think he would be horrified at the recent banking crisis and the merciless nature of capitalism today.

Carnegie’s giving nature was profound: contrary to the capitalists of today, he made money to give back to those without.