As artistic director at the Old Vic, Kevin Spacey has returned to his theatrical roots. But he cuts a pretty mean figure on the big screen too, in his most recent roles in K-Pax, The Shipping News and The Life of David Gale, and his Oscar winner performances in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty. Beyond The Sea, which he stars in and directs, affirms his life-long appreciation for singer and actor Bobby Darin.

Your first film as director was Albino Alligator in 1995. How come it's taken you so long to get back behind the camera?

I was involved in a five-year negotiation to get the rights for Bobby Darin's story. I finally got them in 2000. And for the last three or four years it was a process of figuring out how to tell the story, and raising the money. It was tough.

No-one will be surprised that you can play Darin, but it is a shock just how convincingly you reproduce his singing voice. Was that very difficult?

There were a bunch of stages to it. I started on it around 1999. Two years after that Phil Ramone came on board as the music producer. We would do sessions in recording studios throughout the last four years just so that I could learn about that world, which was completely new for me. And when I was doing other movies, there was a soundstage at Universal we set up as a nightclub. I had a big screen where I could watch any of Bobby's performances. So we worked on it for a long time, and finally ended up recording the songs in 12 days at Abbey Road.

With some of the people in Darin's life still alive, did you have make any compromises about the story you were able to tell?

Not at all. There was never any kind of stipulation that we could do this or that. I wanted to celebrate an entertainer and make an entertaining film. I wasn't interested in doing a really dark biopic - that didn't interest me at all. And anyway, he wasn't someone who did drugs, he didn't drink, he was just a driving force. The conflicts in his life were what interested me.

Who would you cite as your directorial influences?

Mike Nichols and Sam Mendes come to mind in terms of being able to observe how they were just so clear about what their ideas were to every single department on set. I tried to have that kind of clarity throughout the making of the film.

You specifically recreate and recall particular films in certain sequences, don't you?

Certain sections were homages to the great MGM musicals. We actually wanted it to have that kind of Technicolor look to it. That has to do with communication as much as trusting the people that you hire to do the job that they've done. We were really blessed on this film.

Is there someone out there who you would say was heir to Bobby Darin's musical legacy?

What's been interesting to watch over the last six or seven years is all these artists who make it on the Pop Idol shows, or even artists like Robbie Williams, want to tackle Bobby's kind of music. They want to do those songs. I think the more people that do that the better it is. It's great music, and it opens things up to a generation for whom this music would otherwise be lost. There are those people who are definitely trying to straddle those worlds, and I think that's a great and encouraging thing.

Beyond The Sea is released in UK cinemas on Friday 26th November 2004.