B.L. This film is about the painter Vermier, whom you play. Were you a fan of his work or did you know anything about him before taking on the role?
C.F. I am and I was, yeah. I knew more about Vermier than I knew about the book actually. I had not read the book when I got the script and it did seem somewhat consistent how I felt about him when I saw my first Vermier. I'm not a person who has a particularly sophisticated reaction to paintings and fine art. It must have been about five or six years ago, when I was on a promotion for Shakespeare in Love, and I was in the Met in New York and I saw the painting "Woman with a Water Jug" in the window and that was the one that did for me. It was a very small painting in quite a small room full of other Dutch and Flemish art, and it just blew me away.

B.L. Was playing him a bit of a challenge for you, because here is a guy that really existed, but we really don't know a lot about him. There isn't a lot of information on his background. You were pretty well working with a blank canvas so to speak.
C.F. It was easy in some ways and difficult in others when the character is an enigma like that, because it's not like playing somebody totally familiar. If I were playing the British Prime Minister it would be an exercise in imitation as much as anything else and I'd have to work very hard to a specific model. With this, we had carte blanche. There is no portrait or physical description of him. But in another sense though, it was specific because that enigma didn't just give me carte blanche to develop the character in any way I wanted to. The enigma was essential to the story so it was to some extent an exercise in preserving that.

B.L. You get to work very closely with Scarlett Johansson who is one of the brightest young up-and-coming stars to come around in a long time. What impressed you about her and how did you enjoy working with her?
C.F. Just about everything really, I think she's extraordinary. She was 17 years old when she started this job and she is one of my favorite actors that I have ever worked with. One of the things that throw you slightly when you are in your early forties is to work with someone who is that young and actually probably, as experienced as you are because she's been doing it that long. So there was a lot of the 'old soul' in her and she offered unbelievable energy. She was able to keep up with the workload and she had just come off a really difficult schedule and came right into this. I think I'd realized with middle age coming on, my exhaustion threshold was much lower than hers.

B.L. She was absolutely mesmerizing in this role I thought.
C.F. She was utterly committed to the project and utterly enamored with it all, and when you've got something like this it tends to weave a spell on all of us and puts us all on the same page.

B.L. You have worked with a lot of young actresses in the last few years. Amanda Bynes, Mena Suvari, Scarlett Johansson...
C.F. It's been a long time since I have done a film without an American actress interestingly enough. It's very often that American actresses come to England to work and I tend to be there when they do.

B.L. It's interesting. How have you enjoyed working with these up-and-coming young women? Are they good sparring partners for you?
C.F. Amazing. Oh yeah, absolutely. When someone is young and brilliant it does throw down the gauntlet. It stops you from becoming stagnant and complacent and jaded. It keeps you fresh to work with brilliant young people, definitely.

B.L. You also just released Love Actually, which I have to say I truly loved your storyline. How much fun did you have working on that?
C.F. That was a walk in the park and yes, it was a very different piece for me. Girl with a Pearl Earring was not a walk in the park; I felt it was treading a very narrow line of getting it right. With Love Actually I was very fortunate where we had the beautiful location. I was the only one who got to go to the south of France and my story is set apart so it was like a mini movie and I wasn't sprinkled around the rest of the shoot like the other actors were. So it was mine and my part of the story kicked the film off, so we started with that and it was only three weeks. I wasn't carrying the film and it was incredibly enjoyable and I was in very good hands with Richard Curtis the director and there was nothing to it. It was just fun really and when you've only got three weeks to do something, you might as well have fun.

B.L. It's funny, I have to admit that every time I told people that I would be interviewing you, every single person was just aflutter. I know that you have been dubbed the British sex symbol, how does that sit with you? I have to tell you, there isn't a person in this world that wouldn't want to meet you and be in my place right now.
C.F. Oh, there're some people in the world ...

B.L. Very few!
C.F. There are probably quite a few people who do know me that probably wish they didn't. I don't know, I have no intelligent answer to that question, really.

B.L. Fair enough! OK... Everyone wants to know what is happening with the sequel to Bridget Jones' Diary. Can you tell us anything about that?
C.F. It's starting very soon now. It's a very strange beast because it existed before it existed, if you understand what I mean! It existed as an idea and even as a production before it really existed as a script, and the script has been catching up with the rest of the machine. All along the rest of us have been standing by asking, "what are we actually going to make here?" I find that there is a tremendous paradox with sequels. In some ways people want a sequel because they love the first one, so that's why they want it. So in some ways they are looking for the first one and then they get angry if that's what they get. So it's got to pay homage in some extent, and then it has to develop from that. I think it's getting there now, it's sort of where we are. It's going to be a long shoot and I think it does take the story forward.