ScottishNews.com

The Scottish actor plays organised crime figure Jack Ruby in a new film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which happened on November 22, 1963.

Carlyle, 65, plays the nightclub owner with alleged links to the Mafia, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald two days after his arrest.

Oswald had told reporters he was being set up as a “patsy” to take the fall for the shooting of the President.

Ruby had entered the basement area of Dallas police headquarters, which was filled with police officers and journalists.

As Oswald was being transferred to the Dallas county jail, Ruby stepped forward and shot him in the stomach at close range before being restrained.

The live footage of the event would later be described by the Guinness World Records as the “first known human killing seen live on TV”.

Ruby’s involvement fuelled speculation that gangsters played a role in the Kennedy assassination and were involved in a cover up.

The film’s script is said to be based on “first-hand accounts”, including exclusive insights from relatives of a mob boss of the era, Sam Giancana.

Head the Chicago mafia, one of the most powerful criminal organisations in the US during the 1950s and early 1960s, Giancana was rumoured to have helped Kennedy win his Presidential campaign.

It has long been rumoured that he felt double crossed when the Kennedy administration – led by Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy – launched an unprecedented campaign against organised crime once in office.

Writer and producer Nicki Celozzi, a relative of Sam Giancana, said: “The whole essence of the story, the project, why we are doing this, is that it came from Sam Giancana’s brother, Pepe, who was with him during these two days.

“The story, the screenplay, is their story, my family story that specifically focuses on the ‘Outfit’, Giancana, and their involvement in setting up the assassination with the second shooter, who was sent there as a fail-safe back-up and implemented.”

November 1963 also stars John Travolta as mobster Johnny Roselli, alongside Mandy Patinkin – who played a retired CIA veteran in hit TV series Homeland – and Dermot Mulroney who starred in 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding.

It was directed by two-time Oscar-nominated Roland Joffé, best-known for The Killing Fields – the 1984 biographical drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. He also directed the 1986 film The Mission, which starred Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons.

Oswald is played by Jefferson White, who stars in Western TV drama series Yellowstone.

The film charts a tense, 48-hour period surrounding the shocking assassination, which was also caught on camera.

Kennedy was killed in the back of back of an open-top limousine as it travelled along Dealey Plaza in Dallas and past the seven-storey Texas School Book Depository.

Gunshots struck President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, who survived his injuries. Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.

The 1964 Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy and killing Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit.

However, the House Select Committee on Assassinations re-examined the case in the 1970s.

In 1979, it concluded that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” though it agreed Oswald fired the fatal shots.

November 1963 will be released later this year in the US and early next year in the UK and Ireland.