Life in the fun house

It's always great fun when you have a villainess brought to you.

The fun of it is finding out what the motivations are - why she does what she does. In The House Of Mirth, I play Bertha. I'm the one who starts the downfall of Lily Bart (played by Gillian Anderson).

I instigate and create her demise. I loved the fact that Bertha was so high-class, so powerful and she was threatened. It was great fun to play around with that. I hadn't read the Edith Wharton novel, from which the film has been adapted. Shameful. Bad American! But I loved it when I read it - she's fascinating, reading her biography. I did a lot of research.

I made four films back-to-back last summer, so I didn't have the time I usually have to prepare, but I did as much as I could. I looked at costume images and photographs of the era, from late 19th-century New York. I had talked to the director, Terence Davies, about Bertha, what her function in the story is. She's a clever, crafty creature, who would've been a wildly successful businesswoman.

A lot of these women, if they had been put in a different time and era, while they wouldn't have had the wealth, would have had other things. These were women of great intellect and passion. If they had been liberated, other than just 'be', it would've been interesting to witness. It was such a fascinating time. Money - who has it and who doesn't - and how easily reputations can be tarnished or tainted, or how easily people can be protected if they need to be. It was a very socio-political world. Everything from the hat that you wore to how you behaved in public. I would have gone insane!