John Hurt is far and away the best thing about "Captain Corelli's Mandolin". His performance as the village doctor Iannis is one of warmth and authenticity, a fact not unconnected with his decision to actually grow his own impressive handlebar moustache for the part. When I spoke to him I asked if the tuggable whiskers were a British thespian's concession to the American 'Method' school of acting. Not really, he laughed, it was actually more to do with not wanting a false one glued on every day under the sweltering Greek sun.

Not that Hurt, 61, is a stranger to uncomfortable make-up. This is the man who played the shockingly deformed John Merrick in "The Elephant Man" and had a baby creature burst forth from his chest in "Alien" (an iconic scene which he sportingly parodied in Mel Brooks's otherwise awful science fiction spoof "Spaceballs").

He's made over 60 films since his screen debut in 1962, but I was fascinated to find out about working on one of Hollywood's most notorious disasters "Heaven's Gate" (whose spiralling costs and poor box-office literally sank a studio, United Artists, in 1980). I asked Hurt if he felt concerned when director Michael Cimino famously ordered an entire street rebuilt because the houses were too close together. He sagely said that it merely reminded him of John Huston similarly moving a fireplace on one of Hurt's early films "Sinful Davey" (1969). Cimino was just playing for time.

As well as the full interview with John Hurt on this week's Back Row, I'll also be talking to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the British sitcom writers who went to Hollywood and are now masters of the 'script-polish', most recently working on "Pearl Harbour".

Andrew Collins presents Back Row on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 28th April at 5.30pm. You can listen to Back Row then, or Radio 4 at any time, using RealPlayer and your computer.