TORONTO -- You can always tell a Scotsman, but you can't tell him much. That's what my Uncle Robert told me, and since he was a shipbuilding Glaswegian, I believed him.

In keeping with that tradition, Ally McCoist denied it when I told him yesterday that he might have a career as an actor.

McCoist plays a former star soccer player making a comeback for a little Scottish second-tier team in A Shot At Glory.

The Michael Corrente-directed film, a Monday night festival special presentation, showcases the amazing talents of Robert Duvall as the Scottish coach of a team looking for the shot.

But it is McCoist, the former Glasgow Rangers superstar, who shines in what turns out to be a modest crowd pleaser.

"I have never known any fear like it in my life, that acting. It was like going into the unknown," reported McCoist yesterday at a Four Seasons Hotel room.

Duvall, a movie veteran, wasn't as unsure of the Scotsman's thespian abilities.

No doubts

"From the minute we saw him," Duvall said, "we knew we were going to use him."

Corrente and Duvall also knew that McCoist, European soccer player of the year in '83-'84, had his own Glasgow TV chat show. They understood he was frequently in front of cameras and had an alluring knack for grace under publicity's glare.

Duvall, especially, loves the story of the night that rounder and former soccer great George Best walked out on McCoist and his TV show minutes before they were to go on live.

"So Ally got a cardboard cut-out of Best and did the whole interview with it," said Duvall, obviously charmed by the 'Super Ally' persona and legend that goes with him.

For his part, McCoist was overwhelmed by the offer of working with one of his favourites, Duvall. "I thought they were trying to wind me up when they told me Robert Duvall wanted me to be in one of his movies," recalled McCoist.

No, it was true, it turned out.

Now Duvall, who is now shooting Denzel Washington's John Q here, waits for "good news" on the distribution sale of A Shot At Glory.

He figures the film, with McCoist's co-starring help, should have a shot at some box-office glory, as well.


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