B.L. You were so good in this film it was almost frightening!
B.K. Well that's a good start! Thank you.

B.L. This character is very different for you. What is it you look for these days when you choose a role?
B.K I think that the danger is that the agenda in me might change every day. There is probably a deeper agenda that perhaps is more constant and goes in slower cycles, so I have to tap into that to see what story is in me that is ready to be told. Actors have wonderfully rich collection of stories and people inside them that for some reason or other have to get out there otherwise actors will go mad. There is a fine line between actors going mad and being sane, being contented craftsmen or being completely off the wall. So I have to listen, find the agenda in me and when I read
the part of Don Logan in Sexy Beast I did not want to change or alter a single syllable of what I read. I found the writing exquisitely structured, intelligent, really well crafted writing.

B.L Yes, and this guy certainly doesn't hold anything in. He let's it all out.
B.K. I know people who have been so enraged that their bodies have gone into total revolt because they were not allowed to express their rage and they have died extremely painful and uncomfortable deaths because the rage hasn't been expressed. So I recognized the need in me that need to be expressed. It's rather the same as doing Sweeney Todd, which I did for Showtime with Joanna Lumley as my wife. I found something in that that needed to see the light of day. I don't believe in suppressing the dark side and I think that if we are culturally addicted to suppressing the
dark side the consequences could be very serious. Most of us are not psychologically prepared so that when it does actually hit us, we are useless.

B.L. Now Don is a very nasty guy. How far down did you have to dig to get that level of rage to come out of you? Not too far?
B.K. Not to far, no. That's what I am saying, that is how I make choices. You said that I probably have loads of scripts thrown at me, I make choices out of instant recognition. I don't where he is until he arrives in the post or however a script is delivered to me. I don't know where he is until it arrives and then I read and its, god, there you are. I was wondering what it was inside of me rumbling to come out and it was Don and there he was.

B.L. And what a character he is. I'd say its one of the most powerful performances you have ever given.
B.K. You know I nearly missed doing the film. We were very delayed getting it off the ground for various reasons. I did three films in 1999 and the first one somehow got delayed and I very nearly missed playing Don and that would have been a major disappointment for me.

B.L. While watching this film all I could think of was, this man played Ghandi and that was 20 years ago but your performance of that sweet man made a lasting impression.
B.K. Here's the thing, that's a very good point. It isn't that a lot of people remember that performance. Believe it or not, I met a couple on an airplane that saw it last week! That Academy award winning performance, thank god is something that is on DVD, on tape, on laserdisc, on cable, and a lot of people don't think that it was made that long ago. Yes it was made 20 years ago but I say that with joy because I have lived with the pride of that achievement for 20 years. Its enabled me to do a much broader amount of work. I think the thing for any artist if I can call myself
that is to stay as free as possible or else we can't do our work. Painters are free, they can paint what they want. Writers, they can just write and musicians they see music and they play. So its good for me to stay as free as possible and be open to all those commissions that come my way. I am very glad that Don did come my way.

B.L. So how much fun was it playing this guy?
B.K. It was enormously liberating. Enormously freeing. As I say I don't believe in suppressing any side of myself providing its not sociopathic. What I do for a living is not sociopathic. I am an actor I tell stories and I don't hurt anybody. Don never comes off the screen and punctures anybody in the audience. Therefore for me, it was wonderful to work with Ray Winstone. That was a joy. My craft is a joy anyway. It was wonderful to work with director John Glazer who is so accurate, so intelligent, so intense and so committed. The whole ambiance, working in
Spain and London was just a joy. To know that we were telling a story and the centre of it was so sound, and in terms of human behaviour so psychologically perfect.

B.L. Did making Sexy Beast remind you, or put you back into the setting of working on the stage. To me this felt a lot like I was watching a play, especially with the huge monologues that you have and the direct interaction with the other characters.
B.K. Oh yes, it was huge. Don is basically a 30-page monologue. Cause he doesn't let anyone speak. He has to control, every room and every space that he is in. He has to manoeuvre himself to be top dog in every single room. It was tough work memorizing it but it was very well written so that it goes in a structured way. I think that we come back to the writing over and over again and how beautiful the structure of that writing is.

B.L. How would you describe Sexy Beast. Is it a gangster movie?
B.K. No.

B.L. What does it represent to you?
B.K. I think that it is a love story. It's a three dimensional love story so that its between Gal and Deedee and H and Jackie and Me. To a certain extent there's a kind of love and fascination from me to Gal because I want to recruit him on to my team because he's the best. There's that level of ... I can't call it comradeship. I think that Don is obsesses with Gal because Don wants to be more like Gal. Don says, "I don't want you to be happy" because my character desperately wants to be happy and desperately wants to be Ray Winstone whose got the pool and the wife and the quote unquote good life. At the same time he hates that laziness and flabbiness that set in. He's really torn apart by Ray Winstone's character's existence. Its a huge challenge to him.

B.L. This role must have been an actor's dream I would think.
B.K. Its definitely an actor's dream because its so pure. Once you get into Don's tricks, once you get into his pattern of behaviour you can't go wrong. He is just such a pure character. It's wonderful. It's monochrome. It's one great colour over and over and over again and it's never boring. Even though I say the same thing throughout the whole film, "you must come to London with me," I never find it boring or sounding the same.

B.L. You shot a lot of Sexy Beast in Spain, how did you enjoy that?
B.K. It's always good to be on that landscape, but it made my character quite uncomfortable. I've got a tan, Don would never get a tan. Don Logan would stay in the shade, he wouldn't get a drop of sun on him. It was a very alien environment for him. He's always asking what's this? What's that? Its a house in the sunshine. Poor Don, he just doesn't get it. He's a bit cut off.

B.L. I'd say. He's a bit uptight!
B.K. Yes. I would totally agree with you that Don is very uptight.

B.L. The writing in this script is brilliant, but I have to know if you improvised at all for this role or was Don entirely off the page?
B.K. (shaking his head) Not a word was improvised. As a matter of fact, as soon as any of us strayed off the text we would just automatically stop because we would sense that something has gone wrong and that the rhythm had gone under. So we would stop and have a look and check and get right back on track. As soon as we did that all the rules of the game were played again.