Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer - is exactly the movie that I was dreaming of. Nobody influenced us in the direction we took, or forced us to go somewhere we didn't want to go. Obviously, it is a movie that goes some ways that aren't conventional.

I saw Ben Whishaw playing Hamlet at the Old Vic and straight away had a very strong sense that he might be the end of a very, very long road of searching for the right guy. He did an amazing audition, where it all came across this, instinctive feeling that he obviously had for the character in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer.

With Dustin Hoffman, I just enjoyed the fact he was this flamboyent and very ironic person that still followed my desire to make Baldini in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer not simply a joke, or the funny guy, but also a personality and a character.

I wanted to create a believable feeling for 18th Century reality in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. I didn't want this typical film feel of strange people in strange costumes, not really knowing what to do or how to move. If you put an 18th Century costume on Alan Rickman, it looks like he's been wearing it forever because he inhabits the stuff. He is a character that can really travel in time as an actor and transform into this 18th Century person with seemingly no effort.

I love that contradiction between the ugly and the nice. It's shot in a very gourmet way in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. But then Grenouille doesn't differentiate between what's commonly considered to be good smells and bad. He just takes it all, like a true collector does.

If you then cast a somebody, playing a nobody is always an additional effort. But that was not the reason we cast him. It was because Ben Whishaw delivered exactly what I was hoping for.

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer - is exactly the movie that I was dreaming of. Nobody influenced us in the direction we took, or forced us to go somewhere we didn't want to go. Obviously, it is a movie that goes some ways that aren't conventional.