The first time we see your character, Mani, in "Brotherhood of the Wolf", he's dispatching several bad guys. How much was the action tailored towards your martial arts skills?

The fight scenes were a three part process. Christophe [Gans, the director] would come up with the ideas of what he wanted in the fight scene. He would then communicate those ideas to our fight choreographer, who would then take those ideas and work out how they would be done. They were primarily kung fu moves, and my job was then to take those and interpret them.

That seems to be a big part of the film's appeal, mixing and matching genres.

That's the job, we want to entertain. The cool thing about Christophe is that, in his mind, he doesn't want to follow any rules. We didn't do a documentary, we made a fun movie.

Nifty loincloth you were wearing.

Believe it or not, as little as the outfit was, it took me an hour to get into it each day. It's a one piece, you slipped it on, tied it up and then I had to be sewn into it. Once I was in, I was in, and when nature called you just broke the thread, did your thing and got it sewn back on again.

Are there major differences for you working on a French film than an American film?

In my experience, the French tend to blend everything together. Life is work and work is life, while in America you go to work for eight or ten hours, then you go back to your real life. On this movie the friends we had off camera were also our friends on camera. The crew hung out together, and it just sort of flowed. If the movie went on for two or three years it didn't matter, they were doing what they loved and it wasn't about finishing, it was about the process.

"Brotherhood of the Wolf" is released in UK cinemas on Friday 19th October 2001.