Rowan Joffe was on top of everything. He knew exactly how he wanted everything to be, right down to the fact when I made those telephone calls, I didn't do it afterwards in a studio. I think that's how he operates. He likes it to be as real and as clear as possible.

I'm sure part of the baggage that I bring having played a lot of villains is also pertinent to the movie [Before I Go To Sleep], because I'm sure people look at me and think, "Oh, I'm not sure I trust him or not."

My mother moved abroad when I was 11, my dad wasn't around from the time that I was a baby, so I was not the product of a family, but a product of observation - of watching what went on around me, of watching who I liked, what I didn't like, what I thought was good behaviour and what I thought was bad behaviour and tailoring myself accordingly.

You sign for a sequel for everything these days, just in case, options. In the past, you avoided them like the plague because it meant somewhere down the road you couldn't take a job because you had to do a sequel. Now it's a feature of pretty much any feature you do.

I have an enormous amount of respect for Nicole Kidman. She's just done so many great movies and she's been out there at the forefront of carrying films and being a movie star. On set, it really pays dividends because when you're performing with her, she knows exactly how to play it. You don't have to compensate for her in any way.

I've played lots of villains in my time and I think the reason they've been so successful is that they're not two-dimensional. They're not black and white. That's the gig.

If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood.