Roache finds fun in the Sunset

I was looking for another good film after The Wings Of The Dove. When I heard the title Siam Sunset I thought it was a sleazy romantic film set in Thailand, but three pages into the script I was hooked. I hadn't read a screenplay like this before - it was original and multi-layered, a mix of comedy and tragedy, romance and danger, with a twist of the unknown. It had extremes and yet the characters remained very human.

I hadn't done a comedy before. The ones sent to me seemed crass or corny and I couldn't recognise myself in them. But with Siam Sunset I liked the idea of a man plagued by accidents. My character Perry's not really the comic role though, because what's funny is what happens around him. The director John Polson kept having to remind me to play Perry dead straight.

We made the film in Australia and there was a great atmosphere on the set. Being in the desert was a powerful experience - the outback blows you away. We stayed in this strange hillbilly mining town, where people live underground in caves because it's so hot, and where there's a sign on the bar saying, "Please leave your explosives at the door!"

I see the film as the journey of a man who sees life one way, and comes to realise that it's what you make of it that counts. You can be in the middle of nowhere and still have nothing and everything can be OK. You have to accept life's unpredictability - you don't know what's going to happen next. I genuinely like the film and I hope people have as much fun watching it as we did making it.