I do always feel very proud and flattered by being asked to be a part of American productions playing American characters.
Every now and then, they ask me to come in and improvise with Stanley Tucci for an afternoon. They fly me off to America, I improvise for an afternoon - it's not the hardest, most taxing job.
I studied Hitchcock a little bit at University and knew the famous story about the Birds - that he'd tortured Tippi for a day using real birds. I had no idea that it was a five-day onslaught and that it was the tip of an iceberg that carried on through to another film.
I've got to tell you, I've played real characters before and people always bring up this word 'impersonation,' and I'm never entirely sure what it means.
They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.
Four hours of prosthetics every morning, the jowls and the nose, and it was very hot so they're having to attend to it all day, and you're still petrified of so many things, such as, can I speak properly? Hitchcock never quite lost those East End vowels, even though he had the softened California consonants.
Hitchcock's got a very interesting voice; it's a very controlled, measured rhythm that's quite slow and, in that sense, also felt quite controlling in its pace. He retained something from his childhood, that London sound, as well as adopting some of the L.A. sounds... All of this helps you create the character.
I teach for the Book Trust, which promotes reading and writing with children.
But I think the children of actors share a certain pragmatic approach. One is denied some of that 'running away with the circus' element of being an actor.
You always get told how important the premiere and doing the press is, but I have suspicions.
When working abroad you work pretty hard, but with time off, this is the greatest job in the world. You drive. You explore Memphis, or wherever you've landed, or go and see Dr John, or the Californian landscape. And, yes, I've had a few good meals.
It's hard to imagine anyone interested in film not being a fan of Alfred Hitchcock because he's such a key influence on the entire history of cinema - it's hard to escape his shadow.
I was a fan of Hitchcock, but more importantly than that, he is such an inscrutable man, and a very carefully inscrutable man. He apparently was blank-faced with a calm and controlled presence. I was immediately anxious and thought, 'How am I going to get behind that?'
The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.
There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.
There's not a huge pile of scripts at home. It's what happens to be on the table at that moment with your availability. And then you have no control over when these things come out.
I get plenty of time to re-engage with the world I'm trying to depict, so I'm not always living in these parallel worlds.
I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration for Hitchcock the filmmaker remains undiminished. He is a giant of the cinema and the darkness in him informs his cinematic language. You can't separate one from the other.
Hitchcock is a big ask. I am playing someone significantly older than me and someone significantly bigger than me. The stuff I find very interesting is why certain physical things have come about. How can he be light on his feet when he is so big? How can his weight vary so much? Where does this rather beautiful voice come from?
I often get sent scripts about little men in big situations. There's a comic element to it, which is forces stacked against this little guy, and how is he going to defeat them?
