Q: You've done a lot of independent film work, a mix of work in television and all of that, as well. Can you talk about how this allies with your other experiences and what you feel this says about the state of Hollywood? Did you have any agents in mind when you played the role?

SAFFRON BURROWS: Talent agents. Dallas's [Roberts] character. It could be libelous if I answered that. I think there's an alive nature to independent film making which is perhaps less a current in big budget film just in the sense that when you have a little time to shoot something often really lovely accidents occur. Jonas Pate definitely gave us the feeling that the script was our bible but we could sway from that. Just personally, acting with Kevin [Spacey], every take that we did was so entirely different to the last. I think sometimes when there is more money involved there's a little less freedom just because there's more people sitting behind the monitor watching and there's less a feeling of a high wire act about it. So in that way I think it can be exciting, especially when the time is quite constrained. You just think that things can happen.
 

Q: I loved 'The Bank Job' last year. You go from an English heist film, an action movie to something like this which is very American and a character piece. How do you go about choosing roles? Is it that anything comes along you're willing to try or do you have a preference?

SB: I think with each thing there's a different set of criteria. There's a set of criteria with each thing that apply entirely to that thing. So, with 'The Bank Job', I loved Roger Donaldson's track record and the character was just too good to pass up. She's so lovely and rich and complicated, but the heist, the element of running around with guns and everything, I'm not very good at that. Luckily, I didn't have to do very much of it. I guess it take a lot of practice, all of that stunt woman stuff. But to be honest, it's curiosity often about the people who are involved in the story and whether it peaks your interest when you read it and this certainly did. So it just seems to be that thing has enough of the various elements that are high in quality that make you excited about going to work in the morning.

Q: What role did Kevin play in the film in helping you solving your problems, even though he has his own set of issues?

SB: Kevin on set, I think, probably helped everyone at the helm of this because of course he's the protagonist and he knits everyone together. There's a lot of us that barely met. Luckily we had crossed paths, but a lot of the performers just shared time with Kevin. Kevin was the fulcrum as it were. Obviously he's used to running a theater, he's used to running companies. So he and Jonas really set the tone for the thing. I think that was with a lot of incredible concentration and work and then a lot of fun. So, probably the atmosphere that you step into, because it is put together a little like a patchwork quilt, isn't it, with these actors showing up. I have three hours of therapy with Kevin and then Keke [Palmer] shows up. So he set the tone of concentration and the feel of the thing so that you feel, hopefully, that we're all in the same film.

Q: What was it like seeing the rest of the film that you weren't in?

SB: So interesting. Keke Palmer is fantastic, isn't she? I was like, 'Oh my God, that was wonderful.' I always knew that Keke's world that she was in was going to be interesting but she just took it somewhere so beautiful.
 

Q: Saffron, you started acting at an early age, right?

SB: I started making films when I was seventeen. So I was an old age pensioner by Keke's standards. I started doing theater stuff when I was a kid, but films around the age of seventeen.

Q: Saffron, I know you've spent a bit of time living in L.A. Do you think this would be a totally different movie had it taken place in New York?

SB: I suppose in the respect that it's like a coal mining town, Newcastle, L.A. is a film town in regard to it being a one industry town. But at the same time, what I think is rather special about this from having spent time there is that especially the world that Jemma inhabits, there are flavors to it and layers to the place that aren't often shown, I don't think. So even just avoiding all the clichés of where Jemma might live, the fact that she goes to Los Feliz cinema, there's a whole world on the eastside which is not often shown in cinema. Obviously the film industry is based there and that's the center of our story, but I think the back alleys that Kevin inhabits, that's sort of true to any town. Then there's the clichéd sort of world of the Dallas Smith figure who all have pathos underneath it all. Jonas Pate kind of surprised me because it was interesting seeing it all knitted together and what pathos he gave to all of it, really. I don't know if I've answered your question at all.

SB: There are a couple of historical characters that I'd like to play. One is Maud Gonne. She was an Anglo-Irish revolutionary who Yeates adored and wrote most of his work about. Setting aside the Yeates part of her life, she was just a fantastically contradictory woman who changed Ireland in a lot of ways along with a bunch of comrades and was very complicated and messy and probably difficult to live with, sufficiently complicated to make her someone that you'd really want to play.

Q: You seem to identify a little bit with your character in the film. Do you find now that it's difficult trying to get some of the roles you want to play?

SB: I have not yet found them. To be honest, this role was originally going to be played by someone ten years older than me who's a wonderful actress. I won't any name. When she was not doing it Michael Burns put Jonas Pate and I together. So I have not yet encountered that. Of course when you're twenty one there are a bunch of roles that are just girlfriend roles which are just not as interesting. Keke will make them interesting. So then there are more of them and then they just get richer. Of course there are less of them in your thirties but a lot of my friends who are a tad older than me who've been in the acting world a long time have all kind of slightly shifted their power structures. They've all started producing and some are writing and directing, putting things together. That's naturally I think where actor's sensibilities go after doing it for a while, just the idea that you've been on a lot of sets and you start thinking, 'I want to put the camera over there –' and just learning from the people that you're around. So, definitely, you start to think, 'Well, I'm not going to be disempowered by the fact that women of a certain age are seen as, they're characters rather than the female lead or something.' You're not going to let that disempower you. You're just going to change your relationship to films.
 

Q: How important do you think it is for actors to do all mediums, television and film?

SB: I think I really hadn't recognized that until I worked on BOSTON LEGAL and saw the difference – I was one of an ensemble. It's kind of interesting what happens. Now of course the quality of television writing is so high that it makes you also…it's so well written. Often it's not rushed through in the same way that some film scripts are, a little bit green-lit ahead of time. I feel like often there is more rigor involved these days with fine TV writing. So, yeah, it's been interesting having a look at that.

Q: Can you talk about how your character transformation in the film might relate to you personally or something that you might've learned from it?
 

SB: I think that Kate begins with a little bit less power than she has by the end of the story. There's probably a decision there, something to do with what I touched on about the profession with kind of taking your life into your hands rather than letting it happen to you. I think in the beginning she's a little bit outside of herself looking at herself with a puzzled expression and then she decides that maybe there is a different way of living. You can feel washed up at any age, but she definitely decides to shift away from that feeling. She's facing her own mortality to some degree at the start of the story.
 

Q: And also her dependency?

Q: Do you ever see acting as therapy?

SB: Certain stories, when they're revolutionary with a small r then you do come out the other side of them in some way having emerged from something, I think. I did one film here with Amy Redford called 'The Guitar' and at the beginning of it I was in a certain state of mind and by the end I was a little different.

Q: What are you doing next?

SB: I'm doing a little bit of work. I'm starting to produce and develop stuff. One of the projects is the Maud Gonne project. There's some theater maybe next year and some film stuff this autumn, but I'm kind of doing some stuff that I've never done before where you just stop for a little bit and kind of lay some foundations.

Q: What about your singing?

SB: My singing?

Q: I saw your singing in 'The Guitar'. You were singing. I saw you perform.

SB: Check you out. I sing in my bathroom [laughs]. I loved it. My apartment is littered with guitars and I just have to learn more than playing chords. I did fall for the guitar when I did that film. I was busking in Thompkins Square Park.

Q: When you say theater, is that going to be at The Old Vic?

SB: The Old Vic would be fun. I think either or New York. The Old Vic would be great. I'm just figuring out what to do because there are some classics that I'd like to do, but it's that point where you're kind of looking at stuff and thinking, 'Okay, if I'm going to be onstage for a period of time I want to really be in love with the thing that I'm doing.'

Q: Are you living in both places right now?
 

SB: Yeah. A little bit in L.A. and in London.
 

Q: I saw you perform. I know you can really rock out.

SB: Well, thank you. That was really fun.

(Special thanks to Jeff Hill and Jessica Uzzan at Int'l House of Publicity and to Brad Balfour for transcribing the interview)