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I knew exactly how I wanted it to play, but you are never sure until you watch the projected images reflect off the screen. That's when you know it worked.

Honestly, as you can imagine, it really isn't all that fun directing yourself, running back and forth to the monitors to see if you're terrible or not.

Sometimes with films you have a freedom to be able to, Okay, we got that take so let's try another one where suddenly I'll say this, or you'll get to improv. You can't do that with stage. We have to make it new every time, and also within the structured settings.

For me, it was more a dramatic shift to go from the stage to the screen.

My mantra is: put your brain into gear and if you can add to what's on the screen then do it, otherwise shut up.

When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start.

You can be moved by a performance on set, but when you see it on screen, it does nothing. Yet there will be someone you simply didn't notice on set that on screen: bam!

It's not a natural translation, transition, to take something from stage to screen. Onstage your action is communicated through the spoken word primarily, and on screen it's communicated through pictures. So it's always been kind of unnatural to take something that lives on the stage and turn it into moving pictures.

What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.