CRAIG McLean offers an explanation, a highly unusual one, as to why he made the move into acting. And at first, it’s highly plausible. In the months before attending drama college, McLean, who is making his professional debut on stage at Glasgow’s Oran Mor in A Respectable Woman Takes To Vulgarity, was suffering. Literally.

“I broke my nose, both my hands and several ribs – more than once,” says the intensely upbeat 23-year-old from Holytown near Motherwell.

“I had major shoulder injuries, torn hamstrings, the lot.” He adds: “I had a revolving door experience with my local hospital. I knew I didn’t want to keep that going.”

McLean had also suffered several massive dents to his ego, which we come to later. Meantime he explains that before walking towards the footlights, McLean had spent much of his teen life under floodlights, as a professional youth footballer with Airdrie.

“At 16 I figured I’d be a footballer for the rest of my life. But in the next couple of years I became more unfit and wasn’t pushing myself as much. It just wasn’t fun anymore. Then when I was 18 I came back from training one night having been told my expected contract for the next two years wouldn’t be renewed. I was disappointed but I sort of knew I wasn’t making a career of it.”

Did he question his ability? “No, I don’t think I had the determination,” he admits. “I think there were other players there who wanted it more than me.”

Did he suffer the almost compulsory abuse/blame that comes with the role of goalkeeper? “That was certainly the case,” he says, smiling, although he wasn’t laughing at the time. “I’ve had a few howlers in my day. There was one time when I was playing against Dunfermline and stood too far off my goal line and the boy in midfield noticed this and the fact I’m not too tall (he’s five nine) and I was chipped from the centre circle. It flew over the top of me and all I could do was watch it go in.”

Here’s an amateur psychologist’s thought, Craig: perhaps the real reason you stopped investing in your football career was your mind had already been corrupted by acting possibility?

“I totally agree,” he says, with a knowing smiling. “I wasn’t that passionate about football, about anything really. Don’t get me wrong, I got to go to tournaments in the likes of Malta. I had the dream of a life in football. But I think I got into football because that’s what everyone around me did. It was the culture. But by the time I reached 18, my head was somewhere else.”

His head reminded him how much he’d loved impersonating people at school. “I knew I wanted to perform. But there were no theatre groups for young people around me I could have joined.

“I came to realise I’d just have to have a go at acting so I joined the drama class in sixth year and began reading speeches I could use for audition pieces.”

His mother was happy her son had decided upon a new future. “She said I’d best get stuck into learning how to make it happen,” he says. “But when I told my friends, who all have ‘normal’ jobs, they were a bit suspect about me going to drama college. This was a world they knew nothing about. But when they saw I was serious they were really supportive.”

McLean didn’t fully realise how much acting meant to him until he attended drama college. “I found myself working like I’d never worked before. Now, I love what I do. Reading plays. Writing. Learning how to put on shows. Doing anything I can just to keep my foot in the door.”

The excitement he is feeling is palpable. His enthusiasm to get going is such he almost has to be tied down. McLean still can’t quite believe he’s actually appearing alongside Anne Kidd in Douglas Maxwell’s play.

It features a relationship between a newly-widowed woman and her late husband’s toilet-mouthed young employee, Jim. The woman finds herself, surprisingly by developing practised Tourette’s. “Anne’s experience can has been great,” he enthuses. “She’s really good a breaking down a scene and helping me find the right tone, making me think of what I haven’t realised.”

The young actor admits he’s not too separated from the stage character. “Jim comes from a working class background like me. (McLean’s dad is a chef and his mum a dog-walker and groomer). I think I can bring a reality to that; I feel I know how he thinks.

“He’s the type who finds himself in some quite unlucky situations, but he’s not a bad guy. He’s also cleverer than other people think he is. And there’s a naivety about him. But I think I can be pretty naive at times too.”

McLean’s father isn’t around either. “I can relate to that experience. My parents split a few years ago and my dad now lives in Newport.”

The actor will give his all to the week ahead and then the stint the following week at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen. He’s in the world he wants to be part of.

And when you think about it, the football experience will help. He’s already experienced a fair deal of rejection in moving around several clubs.

But at least the worst injury he’s likely to endure is a dry throat, a fractured self-esteem, or a slightly gashed ego?

“That’s true,” he says. “I’m sure all of that will happen. But this time I’ll be working hard to try and make sure that’s not the case.”

A Respectable Woman Takes To Vulgarity, Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Saturday.