Eight minutes into a cup tie between Greenock Morton and Hearts, Laird tore his anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee effectively ending his professional footballing career.

In 2008, he was introduced to an acting agency by longterm friend Jim Sweeney and landed the role of Sean in the Scottish soap opera River City and went on to appear in a number of episodes before departing in 2011.

[3] The following year he starred in the critically acclaimed short film, The Lost Purse in which Laird played the leading role of The Kid.

[9] The series which premiered in September 2014 was crowd funded online and was endorsed by former Star Trek actor George Takei.

[14] Laird also appeared in two BuzzFeed videos where he took on the challenge of taste testing pumpkin spice lattes from 5 popular coffee chains,[15] and starred alongside Carmen Electra promoting Dollar Shave Club blades and products.

[16] In 2017, Laird featured in the Amazon Prime Production of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands: War Within The Cartel playing the role of CIA Analyst Ryan Williams.

In 2018, Laird completed filming on thriller, Green Rush, which was produced by UFC hall of famer Urijah Faber.