American actor Billy Crudup has somehow managed to avoid the celebrity that usually goes with the kind of talent he displayed in Jesus' Son, The Hi-Lo Country, and Sleepers. In recent years the 36-year-old made a particular impression in Cameron Crowe's aptly titled Almost Famous and Tim Burton's Big Fish. In Stage Beauty he plays the foremost female impersonator of the 17th century, whose career is threatened by the lifting of the ban on women acting on stage.

In Britain there is a tradition of theatrical cross-dressing. Is that something you've come across before?

I'm not familiar with it. Where I live in Greenwich Village we have a thing called drag. So the tradition of cross-dressing continues in the States in some regard.

Your role requires you to play it 'straight', but also express varying levels of femininity. Is that tough to do?

It's a bit different from trying to express your sexuality through performance. Ned was most intent in surviving the best way he could in the field that he had chosen with the gifts that he had been given. Playing women was not only a way for him to survive but a way for him to thrive.

What about playing a stroppy actor. Is it fun to indulge that within a role?

Actually it's not. I don't like it when those feelings come up for myself. So having to attend to those feelings as an actor is a little bit ugly. Ned is kind of suffering at that point, it's not all exuberance. He's lashing out at people because he is so uncomfortable with himself and so uncomfortable in his own skin. It's like most comedians are terribly bitter people and their sense of judgement and irony and comedy comes from a real loneliness and depression - I know that's a terrible generalisation - but Ned's chastisement and wit is coming from a hard place. So it wasn't so exuberant to play, I'm afraid.

Period dress takes on a whole new meaning with your role. How was it for you?

I found it terribly disconcerting, the way in which you become encumbered by these pieces of brutal torture which I had never been exposed to before, like high heels and corsets. I found it mystifying. But it dictated so much of the movement; I had to do much less work on the physicality of the character. In that regard it was quite useful.

Now you've experienced both roles first hand, which do you prefer playing: Desdemona or Othello?

I have to say Othello. I was grateful at the end of the shoot to be able to release the ounce of masculinity that was left within me after months of repressing it.