As I was getting into the helicopter, a slightly nervous actor said to me, "Whatever you do, don't say to the helicopter pilot, 'Show me what this baby can do.'" So I of course, got into it and said, "Show me what this baby can do." And we just had this insane helicopter ride. It's the sort of thing you only get to do on movie sets. I'm so lucky to have done it and have that chance.

I'm a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, a bit of Spanish and one-eighth American. I've often wondered if I have an Asiatic ancestor from the East as well because I have deep-set eyes. Make-up artists are constantly trying to shade my eyelids, and I have to point out that I don't have any!

I was lucky, because Ewan McGregor had already been shooting with Roman Polanski for about a month before I got role. And he did a faultless impersonation of what it was going to be like. So when direction happened, it was like, "Oh yeah. That's what Ewan said was going to happen." And so it was a little bit less debilitating than it might have been.

I guess maybe I was hired to play in the Doll House because of my dinner scene in The Sixth Sense, which has been scrutinized a thousand times as to whether you know Bruce Willis is dead, or whether I'm talking to myself. I think that maybe if that could be my forte, to do a scene and be able to say it could be read this way or that way.

I've been lucky enough to kiss three James Bonds on screen: Pierce Brosnan, George Lazenby and Daniel Craig.

The best Christmas present I got from my husband was a week to do whatever I wanted.

Usually the casting process is lengthy and humiliating, but in this instance, The Ghost Writer, it was just too easy. I was sitting in a rental car on an L.A. street and my cell phone rang, and it was Roman Polanski on the line. I couldn't really believe my luck. He said, "See you in Berlin." I sat staring at a palm tree, thinking how surreal that was.