Lynching the Best part

About five years ago I watched a video of George Best called Genius and I said to my wife, Mary McGuckian, who's a film director, that I would love to play George. We chatted to people about the idea of a biopic, and they told us we were mad, because football films are usually a disaster. So we wrote a treatment. Then we contacted George to make sure he was happy, met up with him a couple of times, and started work.

Initially we didn't want to include anyone playing football, but everyone kept saying you can't have a film about Best without games. For the sporting sequences we blended archive footage with our own recreations of key matches. With the help of the footballing choreographer Ray Wilkins, I had to learn each step of George's play. When we showed George the finished film, he thought that we had morphed my head on to his body for the famous goal in San Jos? - in fact it was actually me scoring.

Making a movie about a living legend, we knew we were setting ourselves up for criticism. But we were determined to celebrate his life and his talent. And we wanted to get to the story behind the sensationalist headlines. The film is very much about the twin towers of addiction and genius, and the fact that George was cursed and blessed with both.

The most terrifying moment on the shoot however was having to walk out on to the pitch at Old Trafford to deliver the tribute to Sir Matt Busby. There were 60,000 people there, and we only had one take. The West Ham fans were certainly vociferous in their dislike of what we were doing.