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.

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

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.

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.

Rowan Joffe is very specific. I mean, he wrote it as well and he has a very orderly writer's mind and the same applies to his directing.

I'm very organized and tidy in my home life and I generally do something myself rather than farm it out to somebody else. I don't have an assistant or anything because I think I can do it myself.

When you're making a psychological thriller, what you need to do is have an audience on shifting sand so they're never quite sure where they are.