"House on Haunted Hill" for me was a way of dipping my toe into the shallow end of American culture. [Laughter] But look -- in some ways it's all kind of haphazard.

Did Phil approach you for "Quills," or did you go after it?

My agent rang and said, "I've got this script about the Marquis de Sade." Phil and I had lunch and chatted about things we liked and felt an unspoken kinship. It's the sort of like-mindedness that comes from having the same curiosities. After you meet someone like that, in your mind you check him out and you say, "Wow, he's done 'The Right Stuff,' 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' and 'Henry and June.'" Then you find out he co-wrote 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and 'The Outlaw Josey Wales,' and you feel honored to be part of all that.

My agent seems to think that my greatest stumbling block is always feeling as if I'm wrong for a part. I knew about the Marquis, from university days; he was a counterculture icon then. I've been in "Marat/Sade" and "The Marriage of Figaro"; if you look at anything to do with that period, the Marquis stands astride it like a Colossus. And I knew he was physically bloated and big, so I instantly read that into it. But when Phil got going, he started to talk about the artist as outsider, as maverick, and the Marquis as the beginning of a tradition that takes in Jean Genet and Henry Miller and Lenny Bruce. "The mind," he said, "I'm interested in the mind of the guy."

Then I heard that Kate Winslet was interested, and I am a really big fan of hers -- I'm fascinated by her repertoire. We mutually flattered and excited one another by saying, "Oh, I'll do it if she does it," or, "I'll do it if he does it." Which is sort of real in a way, because you think that with material like this, you need a great actress like her. Then, you're on a plane, you're going to do it, and finally you're standing around in a horsehair wig. Phil was the wild beat generation alchemist putting all this together. He was constantly grinning like a Cheshire cat over the whole production. He gave it this wonderful dangerous humor in the process of making it and in the substance of it.

I can play games with myself, and think: "This is Joaquin's movie, we are following the Abbé." But then Phil comes along and says I'm the ringmaster, not the figure on the side; I'm the one lighting fuses everywhere and leaving matches burning and not worrying where they fall. That gives you something. And so does Doug Wright's dialogue for the Marquis. It's not just written to convey information.

It's like when you read a Billy Wilder or Ben Hecht screenplay and you think, "This guy is so snappy and ironic and sharp and sentimental, all in the same little batch." The American wisecrack tradition powers the machinery of Doug Wright's script. It's got great zingers; I'm amazed at how florid Doug can get and still be as keen as a razor on a line. When the Abbé throws the Bible at the Marquis and says, "Learn from this," de Sade instantly picks it up, spits on it and says, "This God of yours strung up his only son like a side of veal. I shudder when I think what he'd do to me." You become aware that every time de Sade opens his mouth it's to say something lurid, provocative or foul, all to bait the other person into engaging with him. And as amusing and as provocative as that is, there's something desperate and painful about somebody that constantly has to keep seeking companionship in this way. We realized that was the undercurrent of the piece.

I mean, the guy is incarcerated. So like some old weird wasp living away in his little nest, he lures insects in so he can play. There's a great line in Doug's original play -- a great image of the Marquis that is not in the film. The Abbé refers to him carrying on "like a demented peacock." That became a really useful working image in terms of how I saw him strut and parade and be totally at home in his deluxe suite in the asylum, lounging around in a sort of shabby decadence.

Another great thing was the wig. I didn't want to have a wig that made me look like Captain Cook, because, burdened with that, I wouldn't be able to put across the vitality and immediacy of the material. But they found, through some etchings, a fantastic, louche, rather stylish and attractive headpiece and I realized that, with my physicality, he could look like some randy old mountain goat, with horns. Looking at the shape of that thing gave me another really useful image. It's as if de Sade is precariously standing on some craggy clifftop where you could topple at any moment. But he manages to perch -- elegantly. That's useful in terms of figuring out, how do you sit on a chaise longue? How do you breathe life into the incidental moments, for a guy who for most of the film is in one room?

Your wife, Jane Menelaus, is perfect in the role of de Sade's wife, and the one scene with the two of you is stunning. De Sade operates with her the way he operates with the audience, drawing her in with wryness, even tenderness, before turning on her.

It's the antithesis of great prison moments in movies; she brings over his dildoes.

Did the casting help that scene?

When I knew that Michael Caine was involved, and Joaquin was about to sign, I asked Phil, "Who's playing the wife?" And he said, "I don't know. I'm finding it really difficult to cast. People are looking or sounding too contemporary or they don't mesh with the quartet." I asked, "What are you looking for?" He said, "Somebody between 35 and 45, who has a vulnerability and a beauty and aristocratic bearing and also rich emotional undercurrents." Then he asked, "Your wife's an actress, isn't she?" I said, "Yeah, but she hasn't acted for a while. She's been parenting. But we worked together lots on stage." In a jocular sort of way he said, "Someone like her."

We got the script, and she read it, and I've never seen her get so fired up about a part. She has been very committed to our kids, but she said, "I'm going to go for this." I said, "OK, let's hire a studio." We put down a scene with me off camera. I encouraged her to just have a chat with the camera, because the people watching this wouldn't know her. We waited for a couple of nail-biting weeks, and then got word from casting. Phil might have hoped for some weird psychotherapeutic game-playing, but it was all on the page -- the scene cries out "domestic roller coaster."

You've talked about the choreographic elements of your acting. When you parade naked around Joaquin, you give the Marquis an odd tragicomic dignity.

It's part of his resilience, isn't it? At first you think that it's a great act of humiliation to strip somebody naked and then chain them up. But the Marquis manages to use that to probe to even deeper levels of provocation. I never went to dailies but the costume designer [Jacqueline West] went. At that point her job with me was truly over, but after seeing that scene she came back and told me, of my naked skin, "You're wearing it like another costume." The game got notched up to another level. That's how we played "Quills."

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