'Promiscuous' implies that I'm not choosy. In fact I'm very choosy. I just happen to have had a lot of choices.

I think that's why we're always so fascinated with criminal stories because there but for the grace of God it could be us.

David Michôd changed my life, quite literally, along with the chaps at Sony Pictures Classics. That's what set me on my way. I thought we did good work and had a good film, but when it was so praised at Sundance that year that's what really started the ball rolling. We all paid our own way to Sundance.

I think early on it's important to put that at the back of your mind and make your own choices. Sometimes you do pick the same choices, just as a matter of course - not because someone else did it first, but because it was the best choice to make. But any actor worth his salt makes something their own.

It's fascinating. It's also exhilarating when you see people making the exact same choices that you've made. It kind of validates what you've decided to do. I saw a wonderful production of Jessica Lange doing Streetcar with Alec Baldwin. It was gorgeous. It's a measure of what a great classic that is, that our Cate Blanchett also did an absolute amazing Blanche in Sydney, as well as in New York.

I'm in fact Australian but my mother's English so I've got no problem playing a domineering English woman.

Most Australians who've got an ear can do an American accent because we grow up listening to them on television and in movies.