The star of The Mother and Road To Perdition told Film 2004 about playing poet Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath. You can watch a clip from the interview using the link on the right (RealPlayer required).

This was a difficult project to tackle, what made you want to do it?

Probably just that really - because it's difficult. I've been a fan of Ted Hughes, he is one of my favourite poets. Plus the mystique and the legend that their story is, and the crap that's been written about the two of them, the blame that has been put on him. I just thought I wanted to go and find out about this.

Why do you think they had such an intense relationship?

I don't know if I can really answer that. But what was important to me was, the first question I asked [during research] was, "Were they in love?" Everybody unreservedly went: "God, yeah." Obviously it was something really special, and then I could base it on something that was truthful. The rest of it, it's a dramatisation, we're interpreting something. I just wanted to try to get it as even-handed as possible.

What was it like working with Gwyneth Paltrow?

[Filming] was intense but also fun, because you have to break and laugh. We were doing stuff that you had to get away from and break - there was a lot of pain going on. But I think that is why I became an actor. I wanted to explore those sorts of things. [Gwyneth] is a dream to work with, an intelligent actress. She loves what she's doing... and I love what I'm doing, we just hopefully sparked a bit.

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