• Can you seriously prepare a character like this or do you just go for it in the melodramatic sense?
  The key - and this was true when I first read the script - is that for the film to work you've got to believe in Charles's nightmare, so it's a very reactive part. The leading part usually drives the narrative forward; here the story comes at him. For it to be convincing you have to believe the nightmare, so he has to react well. But also, audiences can be very judgemental, and because it's a moment of temptation, he ends up in a hotel room with a beautiful girl, and he shouldn't be there, he's a married man. If the audience condemns him for that, he deserves everything that's coming to him.
  
  So the challenge was to make him understandable - that he's a fallible, normal guy, who ended up in this situation, but doesn't deserve this horrific thing.

• Would you be as gullible as Charles?
  I think it's hard to say. The script's there, the character's there, Charles is one of those characters where you go, "Why are you doing that? Why don't you do this?" But that's the genre we're in. He feels guilty about how he got into this situation, so every time he looks like he could do the thing to sort it out, his guilt gets in the way, and it spirals out of control.
  
  It's very much like those old Hitchcock movies, ordinary guy thrown into a spiralling nightmare.

• Did it help get into the role that you had to do part in an American accent?
  Yeah, it was slightly weird because all the interiors were shot at Elstree! *laughs* But we shot all the exteriors in Chicago. Yeah, that's how it was written, so of course it helped.

• RZA and Xzibit are in the movie; are you a hip-hop fan?
  I am a fan and also a fan of both those guys' acting. Sometimes when guys from the music industry go into movies it's all a little bit gimmicky, but I thought both Xzibit and RZA showed themselves to be really proper and good actors as well.
  
  I already knew RZA a little bit because we've got some mutual friends in LA.

• Are you happy all of the James Bond pressure has subsided now Daniel Craig has been picked?
  Yeah, listen, there are far worse things than to be associated with James Bond, but I'm very happy. I've taken a number of films that take me through to summer this year. They're all incredibly different, very varied, with really great people - so I couldn't be happier with the stuff I'm doing.

• Are you moving more towards American roles?
  I'd consider anything. Nothing's changed for me. Ultimately to have a career in movies to a certain extent, certainly in England, you can't sustain a career in just English movies. The fact that it's opened up in America has meant that I'm able to do films anywhere, which I'm hugely grateful for.
  
  But I live here, my family's here, I'm based here. People keep assuming that I've "gone to Hollywood" or something, but I still feel very much that I belong and live here. I still choose my work in exactly the same way, which is you try and get the best scripts with the best directors.

• How did you enjoy working with Jennifer?
  It was great. People who can do what Jennifer does that well, that light comedy thing, are inevitably underestimated. It's the hardest thing to do; it's much easier to do the serious stuff. People like her who make that light thing look that easy are seriously talented.
  
  It's a different part for her but that was never any doubt that she's a really great actress who was going to do it. She's been under a very serious, severe spotlight in the last year, yet she's incredibly uncomplicated, grounded, lovely & easy. Considering all of that, I think most of us would go a bit weird trying to deal with what she's had to deal with. She couldn't have been easier and nicer, a real pleasure to work with.

• Did you realise that Julia Roberts recommended you to Jennifer Aniston?
  I heard about it afterwards. I think that Julia and Jennifer were hanging at the same place after I'd done Closer with Julia, and my name came up and she said some nice things. It's very nice. I'd say very nice things about both of them.

• Are you more relaxed about celebrity, fame, in the sense that it lets you choose which directors you want to work with?
  I never think of my career in that sort of objective way. My career is the next piece of work that I do. I don't make decisions based on trying to shape a career, I never have done. For me, success is about getting the opportunity to work with the best people. I'm not one of those actors who wants to get to a position where I've created, like "This is the kind of actor I am" and then finally I'm in a position where I'm trying to protect something.
  
  I'm much more interested in a career where you can move anywhere and do lots of varied and different things.

• Has the Golden Globe given you more opportunities?
  It hasn't changed the kind of roles I get. The awards thing puts you on an international platform. So I'm very fortunate, I'm getting offered a lot of films, and how much that's a direct result of the Golden Globe I've no idea.

• When you did the BMW Internet films, you were with some great directors on that, does that have a positive effect on your film career?
  I think it certainly had an effect on my career just in terms of... The only thing really prior to that which introduced me to America was Croupier, and I got the BMW gig from the back of that movie. There was an awful lot of attention heaped on that campaign, because it was so unusual. I did seven or eight of those small movies with incredible directors from Wong Kar Wai and Ang Lee to John Frankenheimer. So there was an awful lot of heat just within the industry, people were fascinated why these directors were doing BMW spots.

- Joe Utichi from FilmFocus