When actor Kevin McKidd debuted his character army trauma surgeon Owen Hunt in the famed fictional Seattle Grace Hospital it was high octane, even by the histrionic standards of medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

His first scene saw him perform a tracheotomy on a patient with a ballpoint pen; in the same episode he knitted a gash in his own leg with a stapler.

Fast forward and he’s pulling an icicle from the stomach of character Dr Cristina Yang, then kissing her and walking off like it’s just another day at the office.

Owen had PTSD from Iraq and in future storylines attempted to strangle Cristina during a night terror, cheated on her, got married three times and stabbed some pigs to teach his horrified interns how to treat trauma injuries.

Given the fractured, flawed and exhausting nature of the character, it’s fair to say that Owen became one of Grey’s Anatomy’s most polarising protagonists. Although McKidd said he loved the character as ‘fundamentally good’, even he has admitted Owen could be ‘a bit of a d**k’.

The news that McKidd’s character is to be written out in the season 22 finale next month after almost 400 episodes and 18 years has brought jubilation from many fans and spawned a plethora of TikToks on ‘Why I hate Owen’.

But for McKidd it’s a sad farewell to a part that made him into a global superstar; the drama is one of the most watched shows on the planet with 3.2billion hours streamed in 2024 alone.

‘I signed on for eight episodes and I thought I might get half a season out of it but it turned out to be the longest acting gig of my career,’ said McKidd.

‘Grey’s Anatomy has been a huge chapter of my life, creatively and personally, and I’m deeply grateful for everything the show has given me over the years.

‘As that chapter comes to a close, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead – building new work, telling new stories, and taking everything I’ve learned into the next phase of my career.’

The ‘next phase’ includes a part in the remake of the 1986 fantasy flick Highlander, and this week it was announced there will be a collaboration between McKidd’s production company Ferryman Films and STV on a new crime thriller based on best-selling novel The Red Shore.

The book’s protagonist detective Eden Driscoll is based in Devon but the development could see him transported to Scotland for the screen adaptation.

McKidd has championed Scottish talent, citing its film and TV crews and actors as ‘some of the most lovely, talented and passionate in the world’ and he has always expressed a wish to support the industry on home soil.

In 2023 on a break from Grey’s Anatomy he returned to Glasgow to shoot the detective drama Six Four and described it as a joy to ‘come back and play a match on my home soil’.

Naturally Scotland was happy to see him, and when locals heckled him asking what they were shooting, he reverted to home banter.

He said: ‘We ended up saying it’s a new show called Taggart’s dad. It’s a spin-off, the back story.’

Filming in Glasgow was also a chance for him to escape from the superficial LA gloss. ‘In Hollywood everything has to look good and you have to go to the gym all the time,’ he said. ‘You have to. It was nice to dress down and let myself go and be part of something gritty. I went for a pint with my mates and I just slipped back into home.’

He had been acting for nearly 20 years before he was invited in 2008 into hallowed Shondaland, the production empire of Shonda Rhimes who created not only Grey’s Anatomy, TV’s longest-running medical drama, but phenomenal hits such as Scandal and Bridgerton.

McKidd became a firm fixture in the flatteringly lit, glossy fictional hospital, though he was more Celtic-rugged than the polished handsome of other male cast members.

While Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane’s dishy doctors Derek Shepherd and Mark Sloan were given pet names like McDreamy and McSteamy, Hunt was McTrauma, Agent Orange and Ginger Beer – although he insists: ‘I am actually a blond. They died my hair red.’

McKidd has always brushed off the loathing for his character in Grey’s, insisting if he can evoke such extreme emotion he must be doing something right in his acting. Dramatic characters, he argues, are ‘not in a popularity contest’.

As himself, he might win such a contest. Unlike some of the cast in Grey’s, McKidd has never been accused of starry entitlement, with colleagues frequently citing him as their favourite co-worker and praising him as grounded and fun.

When McKidd donned his Grey’s scrubs, 12 years had passed since the release of Trainspotting and his role as core character Tommy, the athletic and drug-free innocent who succumbed to the temptation of heroin and ultimately died alone in a rancid flat with a neglected kitten.

After the film’s release McKidd watched his fellow actors swiftly propelled into Hollywood as it became the second highest grossing British movie of all time.

The year after Ewan McGregor played drug addict Mark Renton, he landed the megastar role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, securing him A-list status.

Kelly Macdonald, who played Diane, went on to win a role in the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men; Ewen Bremner (Spud) had parts in Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor; and Robert Carlyle carved out a glittering career in TV and films such as The Full Monty.

But the journey to Hollywood wasn’t as smooth for McKidd.

He admitted his experience of Trainspotting was ‘tainted’ after he was omitted from the line-up in the film’s iconic poster despite playing a key character.

Movie chiefs told him he missed out because he had taken a cheap package holiday when the stills were taken but he was told to take the trip and he felt it a lame excuse for an exclusion which still mystifies him.

‘It did bother me for a few years after, particularly because it would be one of the first things people would ask me about. It was a hard thing to get your head around.’ And when the rest of the cast were at the Cannes premiere he was stuck at home uninvited, eating a fish supper.

He said: ‘To be totally candid I sat there and thought, ‘‘What the f*** happened?’’

‘I’d missed the poster shoot and now my invite to Cannes must have gone astray.’

In an interview with the college paper at his alma mater, Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, he admitted his experience after the film wrapped had been a letdown.

He said: ‘After filming Trainspotting, I was living in Partick and work dried up. By the time the premiere came around, I had no money and I had to borrow a suit.

‘We got picked up in a limousine to go to the premiere, and I remember thinking ‘‘I hope we’ve got a lift back’’. We didn’t, so after the premiere, and the big fancy do, me and my girlfriend walked home in the pouring rain.’

McKidd was hesitant to follow fellow Trainspotting stars across the pond, saying he didn’t feel ready, and though holding off might have delayed international stardom, he doesn’t regret it.

He said: ‘The Trainspotting cast were all doing really well; Ewan had just got the Star Wars gig. However, this is one of the only times I listened to my gut – and got it right.

‘Los Angeles would have just chewed me up and spat me out. I was a reasonably innocent boy from Elgin and didn’t have much street smart about me.’

McKidd has always been a proud son of Elgin and even now as a US citizen, the Moray town and Scotland remain imprinted on his soul as home.

Earning £100,000 an episode on Grey’s Anatomy has afforded him a multimillion property in sun- soaked LA but he remains ‘painfully homesick’ and he returns to intemperate Scotland as often as he can.

That convincing American accent on Grey’s Anatomy switches off on the first call of ‘cut’ – McKidd is determined to keep his Scots tongue from veering too far away.

Given any opportunity he will advocate for Scotland and when he voiced Young MacGuffin in the 2012 animation Brave, he was asked to invent some gibberish for the character, so shoehorned in Elgin’s native dialect, Doric.

An accomplished singer and musician, he used a promotional tour for the film to rent a large house in the Highlands and invited friends to help him record a charity album of old folk songs; it was also a chance to take a nostalgic journey into his past.

‘Elgin is what I know and what is most familiar to me. Coming back is like putting on an old pair of jeans,’ he said.

‘When I go to the pub, I hear a lot of the people complaining that nothing has changed, but I take comfort from that.’

McKidd revisited Seafield Primary School where as a seven- year-old he played a king who couldn’t stop sneezing; his first acting role and a seminal moment. ‘I was a very shy boy but my shyness disappeared when I walked on stage. That’s when I got hooked,’ he said.

At Elgin Academy he was ‘never off the stage’ and he was a regular in plays at the local town hall.

Acting was McKidd’s passion but growing up on a council estate with his plumber dad Neil and mum Kathleen, a secretary, performing for a living seemed unrealistic.

So at 17 he got a job at the local Macallan whisky distillery where he swept the floors; he had no inkling that decades later he would be the face of the brand’s advertising campaign in a promotional shoot by photographer Annie Leibovitz. The prospect of a job as a stillman in the distillery was an option and he considered engineering until the offer of a drama place at Queen Margaret University confirmed his career path.

After graduation he was working in theatre while paying the bills with odd jobs, then he auditioned successfully for Small Faces, a 1996 Scottish street gang drama based in the 1960s and directed by Gillies Mackinnon.

It was when Mackinnon gave Trainspotting director Danny Boyle a sneak preview of the rushes of Small Faces that the film found its Tommy.

Whatever his mixed emotions about Trainspotting, McKidd has always credited it for ‘blowing the doors off’ his career, helping him to ‘grow as a person and actor’ and opening up opportunities – though it took time.

When work dried up in the early 2000s, McKidd had to take construction and bar work to keep not only himself afloat but his then wife Jane Parker and their two small children.

In 2005 came his first foray into the US market playing the stoic and troubled centurion Lucius Vorenus in the toga and sandals epic Rome.

The high production costs saw the show cancelled after only two seasons but it won critical acclaim and launched McKidd’s Hollywood career. He was embedded Stateside at last.

‘I get annoyed when people refer to my ‘‘overnight success’’. I had 15 years of really hard work before I got the Rome gig.’

McKidd has previously voiced his concern over leaving Grey’s Anatomy, fearing he is ‘institutionalised’, but he is a different beast from the chronically shy Elgin kid who was in Trainspotting; he seems genuinely excited to face new challenges.

Others have left the show and achieved enormous success, significantly McKidd’s close friend Sandra Oh, who played Cristina. She won a Golden Globe and earned critical acclaim for her role in Killing Eve.

His personal life also looks happy too after two failed marriages and four children; he is currently dating actress Danielle Savre, star of Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Station19, and they appear very loved up.

Whatever is next for McKidd he has never lost sight of his blessings.

He said: ‘As they say in America, “it’s all been gravy’’.’