In love with her role

I suppose with the success of An Angel At My Table and Shallow Grave, most people perceive me as a film actor, but I have done a few plays too. However, it is very hard to find a piece of theatre that you can really get excited about and really want to put yourself through. You feel so publicly vulnerable in the theatre. But with In Flame I was flattered to be asked. I liked the team and responded to the director Anna Mackmin immediately. I take a lot of care over what I pick to do. Charlotte Jones's play is so concise and so well-crafted and rich. There are so many themes and tangents that they turn around on each other and echo and add to the next image. Quite extraordinary. I'm full of admiration for Charlotte Jones.

The play is set in London in the year 2000 and Yorkshire in 1908. I play Alex in the London 2000 part. She's sort of shut herself off from living life to the full, she is very controlled and thinks she has everything she wants. Indeed, there are people who admire the way she lives her life, but in reality she is almost emotionally dead. On stage you see parallel lives, as one girl lives her life to the full and the other girl doesn't. The woman from the past is trying to break through and influence the contemporary woman to really live her life and not be a shut-down individual. In Flame was a big hit last year at the Bush Theatre. If we can get the timing right I think you will find it very funny. The humour is often quite tricky, because it's very easy to overstep the mark and miss it. It's easy to be really smart but that just isn't funny.