I have a great interest in Victorian musical & cabaret performances and Weimar artists so the references are there, to Cabaret and also All That Jazz and other films where, where there's a kind of (influential German playwright Bertolt) Brecht-ian approach, almost to the character standing outside of himself or, in this case, he's "self-séance-ing."

I can get on with all different sorts of people, and I never feel homesick, particularly, or I've never felt kind of patriotic towards any one country.

(The) process of acting is no different to conventional screen acting, in that it's providing a perfect interface between the director and the performer. So there's no sort of long way around a viral committee of animators.

You don't go - oh this is a motion capture role, I'm going to employ this method of acting. We don't have anything to hide behind when we're doing this.

It's a different rhythm than most movies. For a lot of the actors, you're 12,000 miles away from home. It becomes a way of life - getting up at five in the morning, shooting every day, day in day out, for 270 days. The new cast playing the dwarves were carrying incredibly heavy weights in their suits, they sat through hours of make-up every day. So it's quite challenging from a stamina point of view.

No matter how extreme things get, it still has that ring of truth about it that backs the characters - even though they're despicable and what they're doing isn't right you still care for their fate.

On lower budget things you're still working collaboratively, but the investment and your level of creative importance is higher on something like this.