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It's not really possible to open 'The Casual Vacancy' without a lot of expectations both high and low crashing around in your brain and distorting your vision. There's no point pretending they're not there.

You can get a bit world-weary in this job, and 'The Passion' reminded me of what a fantastic job acting is and how lucky I am to be doing it.

What's been nice is that I've been able to direct from a very idealistic place. I've never had to make my living as a director, which gave me a chance to choose material I feel passionate about. The directing allows me to not have to grab any acting role that comes along. I can pick and choose a little bit.

As a director, there's no natural career progression. So after 'The Wackness,' which was very personal to me, I was very, very picky about what I was going to do next, to the point where I think that I was almost too picky.

Other acting opportunities had come along, but nothing that was tantalizing enough to me to step away from what I found most interesting.

Making a transition to the adult acting industry was pretty smooth for me, and I had a great balance and a great opportunity not to do just children shows.

'Fresh' was maybe the third audition that I had after I got an agent, so I was crazy excited when I booked it.

Once, Naseeruddin Shah told me that the wafer shop was the best acting school that I could have attended. And I completely agree. I observed every customer very minutely and picked up some quirk or the other. Later, I used those experiences while playing different characters.

I felt Brighton was a perfect ending to a really interesting career.

With acting, it was really more of a general kind of experience of really just loving being in the theater.