Back on stage

I've read a lot of film scripts recently and some were good, but none were like To The Green Fields Beyond. It's entirely different - playwright Nick Whitby has a fresh voice.

The play tells of eight men in the tank corps in 1918 during one evening before battle - and their lies and prejudices. It opens up a debate about what the First World War was about and what it meant to the people involved - the writing is extraordinary.

My last play, the Hampstead Theatre's Unidentified Human Remains And The True Nature Of Love by the Canadian writer Brad Fraser, was seven years ago, so this was very, very unexpected. But Sam Mendes called and said he wanted to do this play - we met and I immediately thought:"I'd love to work with this person." As a director, he's meticulous and inspiring - he makes you feel as if you're the only person who could do the part.

This is entirely different from a film like Mission: Impossible 2. It's very collaborative, egalitarian in the way my character, a Scottish officer called Child, would love the world to be. We had five-and-a-half weeks to get the play ready, whereas in a movie you have three months to do one scene right.

I told Sam I was nervous about going back on stage, but Sam said: "It's like a movie, this play." It's been nerve-racking, but at the end of the day I'm having a ball.