Roman Polanski actually said as much to me once. He had his head in his hands, and I said, "Roman, I've got to tell you, as an actor, seeing the director with his head in his hands... Look, I really want to do what you want me to do." And he went away and he came back, having obviously thought about what I said. And he said, "When my head is in my hands, I'm closing my eyes and trying to remember what I saw in my head, before any of the stuff."

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'm not much of a Method actress, so even though my character in The Ghost Writer was quite dark and bad-tempered, I could only do that if I was seeming quite perky.

I didn't know box office was a thing you could possess but I don't have it. I go up for lovely roles and people with this nebulous thing called box office get them so there isn't much I can do about that unless you know where I can get some box-office myself!

My parents are both lawyers, and my father always said his best cases have been returns, cases that come into his office from another lawyer. So he said, "Never be ashamed to take a return." All my best roles have happened because someone else dropped out at the last minute, and God bless those actresses for their queeny fits, their sprained ankles, their better job turning up, because that's how I've got my best work.

Ewan McGregor is a very genial and entertaining man, and Pierce Brosnan is possibly the nicest man in the world. Actually, it was quite a genial set The Ghost Writer, but the weather and the colors and the actual surroundings were oppressive. But it was a created atmosphere. What was so striking is that Roman Polanski had his crew from The Pianist, and we were shooting in Berlin, so there were German and Polish and French people, and I was just sort of enjoying being in this mix of people, all kind of rubbing along together. That felt good.

I am the worst judge of how a movie is going to do. I always have great and ambitious hopes, but none of them see the light of day.