You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction.

I didn't sound anything like Capote at the screen test. It was more like Bob Dylan. In his early years. With the flu.

It's hard for it to make a mark in this city because London has so much culture to offer.

Somewhere the glamour has gone because of the industrialization of this whole process. I wish it [filming] felt as magical and glamorous as people want it to be, but it feels like a routine people are going through.

I was a fan of Hitchcock, but more importantly than that, he is such an inscrutable man, and a very carefully inscrutable man. He apparently was blank-faced with a calm and controlled presence. I was immediately anxious and thought, 'How am I going to get behind that?'

I don't know if it's harder but when you're playing a real person you want to honor their memory - even if they're a criminal or someone that the public loathed. That can be challenging.

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.