What’s in a name? For an actor it’s an important consideration, the identity imprinted on the calling card of your talent for press and public alike. Emun Elliott is as aware of this as anyone, as the Edinburgh born actor has been building his reputation on stage and in television in recent years. And things look likely to move on further with the eagerly awaited release of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus and an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Filth heading to cinemas in the coming months.

So having a distinctive name should prove to be a positive advantage for Emun (which is pronounced Ee-mon), and it’s one he proudly bears as a reflection of both his Scottish roots and his father’s Persian heritage. “I was born and brought up in Scotland,” he explains, “but I love the Persian side of my background. It’s an ancient culture with a fascinating history, though I’m equally proud to be Scottish.”

Emun studied English and French at Aberdeen University for a year before enrolling at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Then, upon graduation, came the fateful decision to uproot and move south to settle in London and pursue his acting career in earnest. “It’s a big choice for Scottish actors because most of the contacts you’ve made are Scotland based. Your choice is to stay and get involved in the great theatre that’s going on up there – and there’s a couple of TV shows but not many films.

“I think if you want to go for it and take the leap you have to move to London. I think it’s quite easy to get trapped if you stay - you work with the same theatre companies and on the same television shows. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I moved straight to London when I graduated and I don’t regret that decision at all.”

In the six years since relocating to the capital, the 28-year-old actor has lived in various spots in North London but these days calls Stoke Newington home. “It took me a while to settle in,” he admits. “I wasn’t sure about London for at least three years after moving here. I felt this wasn’t where I belonged. I was surrounded by millions of people but I didn’t know a single one of them. It’s an alienating feeling for someone from a smaller city like Edinburgh. In the end it’s about finding a hub, finding a borough or an area that you can feel connected to and settle in there. But it does take time.”

To look through his CV you might think the actor has had little chance to settle in anywhere, so busy does he appear to have been. Since 2006 he has toured the world with the play Black Watch, and gained valuable experience across a range of television programmes including Monarch of the Glen, Lip Service, Games of Thrones, Labyrinth and the ribald sitcom Threesome, as well as films such as Black Death.

“To be honest my measure of success initially was leaving drama school with an agent and a job,” Emun explains. “It was just a small theatre job in Dundee and at that time in my life that counted as a major success. It’s all relative I think depending on what point you’re at in your career.

“But I think the thing that I’m most grateful for is the fact that success has been gradual. So stepping onto set on Prometheus I felt that I knew what I was doing and I was ready for that spotlight. If that film had come along when I was straight out of drama school it would have been a huge challenge and a massive risk.”

There is a shrewd wisdom to this view, a self awareness that will serve him well in the years to come, but there’s also a recognition that more experienced co-stars like Michael Fassbender and Oscar winner Charlize Theron were equally daunted by the scale of majesty of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Prometheus.

“You read the script and it says this scene takes place on a spaceship, you think maybe they’ve built a corner of it or are going to create it with CGI, but Ridley had basically built a spaceship. And he does that to create the right vibe for his cast. For a guy who’s been in the game so long he’s extremely generous when it comes to helping his actors out. Still, everyone felt equally nervous on that first day because it pretty much looked exactly like the spaceship in Alien.”

Fans of Scott’s 1979 sci-fi classic will already be salivating at the prospect of Prometheus, which is so much more than a prequel to the events faced by Ripley and her colleagues aboard the Nostromo. In this futuristic tale Elliott is one of the crew of a spacecraft traversing the furthest reaches of the galaxy in search of benign intelligent life. What they find is far more deadly, brilliantly conceived by Ridley Scott and his team to help the cast enact this spectacular story.

“You felt like you were walking onto the set and stepping into the shoes of these incredible actors who were part of that incredible film,” Emun enthuses. “But that pressure dissipated within seconds of the first take because of the atmosphere that Ridley created. We knew we were in capable hands, and there was a terrific group of actors on board too. I think Ridley is more excited than anyone about this film, which is definitely a good sign.”

It’s a good sign too that Emun is alive to the possibilities of contrasting roles in wildly differing projects. Another forthcoming film is the drama Strawberry Fields, made for only £100,000 – light years away from the scale of a film like Prometheus, this figure is closer to Ridley’s cigar budget – but all part of a strategy to stretch his talent and explore as wide a range of characters as possible.

“I guess that’s the way it’s panned out,” he agrees. “I’m an actor because I enjoy transforming and being involved in lives that aren’t mine and that I’ll never get to lead. I guess if I box myself into being a comedy actor or a sci-fi actor then it would defeat the purpose of me becoming an actor in the first place, because that variation and the fact that you get to step into polar opposite worlds is what attracted me to this job.”

Wise words from Emun Elliott. Remember the name.