I'm a big fan of David Cronenberg, I'm assuming one of the reasons you took the role was to work with him?

Well, the character and the script came to me before David did. The producer Catherine Bailey had developed the story from the novel by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay. She sent it to me about three or four years ago and I responded very strongly to the character, who is technically a schizophrenic. David came on much later on, both Catherine and I felt the mood and feeling of this piece is something David would be brilliant at creating.

Tell us about the story.

You are in the head of this man Spider, who's a lonely man who's come out of a psychiatric hospital. He's in a halfway house and he's trying to make sense of his past.

You play this character very well, are you worried about being typecast?

It was compounded by the fact that after filming "Spider" I did Francis Dolarhyde in "Red Dragon". So then recently I did this clean-cut American politician in a romantic comedy with Jennifer Lopez called "Maid in Manhattan". It's a romantic comedy in the "Pretty Woman" and "Working Girl" tradition, it's love across the class divide.