Jonathan: Tell me about the movie and your character in it.

Hoskins: Well, basically he's the most boring man in the world, but his redeeming feature is he kills people. It's basically a study of loneliness.

J: Is there a danger that when you play a dull, careful character you might lose the audience?

H: The thing is you've got to make the fact of his dullness interesting. The fact that he is who he is and the changes that Atom Egoyan, the director. added to the story, like the video, the cooking and all that, was a shortcut way of describing this fella's character. And what this guy does becomes the interest in the film.

J: How did you achieve the Birmingham accent, it's very different for you?

H: I had Penny, she's a brilliant coach. She was there all the time - behind the camera and every now and then I'd do a performance and think 'that was terrific', and she'd be - no - do it again.

J: Atom Egoyan is a Canadian making a film in Birmingham. Did he have a peculiar take on the area?

H: Yes. There's one shot in the film that actually explains the whole of his take on it: there's this little tiny green Morris Minor and these great big smoke stacks and you're telling the story of this tiny little life and the world's going up in smoke. It's extraordinary. The way he actually found Birmingham. I suppose it would take someone who's not from there to see it that way.

J: Your character kills people, but he's almost likeable. Do you leave the character behind when you go home?

H: I can't see me taking the characters I've played home to Linda and the kids! Putting it together was very intense, like building a house with matches and no glue, it could fall apart very easily. I've never actually worked as intensely on a character like that, except once, that was with Jonathan Miller. When I went to the Toronto Film Festival I started to realise that both Jonathan Miller and Atom Egoyan direct operas. And they actually direct people. They get emotions and feelings out of people to music. Both of them are very into the minutiae. But when I saw the film, there is this kind of vibration that goes through it.

J: It's your co-star, Elaine Cassidy’s first movie, what was she like to work with?

H:There's nowhere to hide with Elaine and she's one of the reasons why the film works. The minute he lies to her it's like a jolt because she's the kind of kid you do not lie to. And she's sort of quite extraordinary in he fact that she can walk straight in and be that victim, without changing at all. It was extraordinary. There's an incredible naivety she has to bring alive on screen, otherwise we wouldn't believe in her and the film would collapse.

J: Would you like to do more directing?

H: Directing is something I usually try to avoid, but I keep getting lumbered with it. It's hard work. It really is hard work, you're stuck with it for a long time. You have to set it up, you have to do it and you have to edit it, put the music to it, everything else. Acting you turn up and there's all these people to pamper you and make you up and ask "have you got tea, have you eaten?" But a director . . . I'll never forget when I directed 'The Raggedy Rawney' (1988) there's a photograph of me, all the crew. I was right at the front, doing the business. And there was about 20 people in that photograph, and there's not one single one of them looking at me. Not one of them! I really hold a lot of weight as a director.

J: You're like the godfather of this new wave of young British, gritty actors. The Lock, Stock guys and so on, do you feel paternal?

H: I feel terrified! I did 'Twenty Four Seven' with Shane Meadows, I thought they'd see me as a right old fogey because it was all his mates from the Nottingham Streets and I turned up and fortunately they just accepted me. I tell you at my age if you realise you've still got a bit of street cred it's quite flattering. It's wonderful.