[on Vera Drake (2004)] You don't have a script, so we prepared that film for six months and then filmed it for three and a bit months. Nothing is improvised on film but for me I created with Mike [director Mike Leigh] that woman literally from the day she was born, so I know everything about her life. And of course we can't do it in every job because there is not the time, because most films you literally get the script, you learn it immediately and you turn up and you just do it. Which, with a lot of the work I do, that's plenty of preparation. But for something like that--and I'd never worked with him before--and it was a real eye-opener. And to have that happen to me in a time when--I hope--was the middle of my career, it was like going back to drama school and starting all over again. (On Vera Drake (2004))
