Once we start shooting, it's in there. You're trying to get into a place where you rise to the work, rather than make it manageable or make it work for you.

I don't plan in terms of career ambitions. The only career ambition I have is to work with people who are going to bring you up and elevate your performance. They'll let you know things that you didn't know already and bring you places that you might not have gotten to otherwise.

I loved teaching. And I always used to say that acting was just something I did purely on my own terms, and that if I had to make a living from it there would be too much pressure.

So, to get to play somebody who was insisting on it, in spite of all the evidence was very liberating and exciting. It went quite deep. I suppose I reference a kindness and humility that I would have seen in my parents' generation, a little bit more than now.

You work for it. You don't have to massage it, so that it fits into the way it has to be. He's just too vigorous a writer and the dialogue is too sparking to do anything other than inhabit it and give it as much truth as you can. You just try to make it part of your DNA. That's what the challenge is, really.

I started hitching about the country when I was 16 or 17 years old. I found the music that was played around the country - Irish music - had a particular resonance.

Look at the Coen brothers. All their minor characters are as interesting as their protagonists. If the smaller characters are well-written, the whole world of the film becomes enriched. It's not the size of the thing, but the detail.