Hitchcock's got a very interesting voice; it's a very controlled, measured rhythm that's quite slow and, in that sense, also felt quite controlling in its pace. He retained something from his childhood, that London sound, as well as adopting some of the L.A. sounds... All of this helps you create the character.

They know you're not Alfred Hitchcock, but you need to be enough Alfred Hitchcock for them not to be bothered by it. That's a reassuring thing.

I would absolutely like to play more leading roles. There’s no philosophy - well, the only philosophy, I suppose, is to try and do different things.

You always get told how important the premiere and doing the press is, but I have suspicions.

The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.

When you're training as an actor, a lot of the big work you're learning is to treat fictional characters like real people. You don't have the problem of discovering a backstory with real people, but there's always a mystery which is common to both fictional and factual characters. They are never quite the person you think they are.

I know, for a fact, that I'm a very different person on my own than I am with someone else. We are different with each other. These things are constantly adjusted. And that's true of humans. That's not just true of famous people.