The first couple of weeks of filming were quite tricky for me to find my feet with the character [Maigret], which wasn't helped by the story that we were telling.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

I've read about eight or ten of the original novels, and one of them is where Maigret's in bed for the entire story! His wife is running around and solving the case!

I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s.

When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set.

I mean I can do it when I'm very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing.

This is sort of inflection-free acting [playing Maigret], and I really wasn't sure if I could do it - you make your mind up on whether I've succeeded or not. But yes, I found it difficult when we were shooting; it was a couple of weeks before I settled into not worrying - to finding a way of delivering those lines - so my worries of many months before I think had been justified. I found it a difficult way of being.