- Did you warm to Sofya during the course of the shoot?

I warmed to Michael’s version of Sofya, definitely. I never saw that archive footage of them that we see at the end until I saw the movie. I thought ‘oh my God, maybe I’ve missed something there,’ because she has such an amazing presence in that little film.

An incredible, powerful presence, she’s like a big ship travelling through everything. Maybe I missed that out, I don’t know.  I just did what Michael gave me, along with Jay, and portrayed it as truthfully and honestly as I could.

- Is the way in to playing iconic characters, people who are real, finding something you can relate to in their lives and behaviour?

Yes, the trick or the necessity is to make the people, these iconic, historical people that we’ve all read reference books aboutreal. Whether human or silly, absurd or emotional or moving, just to make them as real as possible. My character is without doubt an operatic character, that’s what she is and that’s how she operates.

The irony is that while a lot of people ask me about my Russian ancestry and how it influenced me, Sofya is a lot more like my English working class mum from West Ham than she is like my old Russian dad from Smolensk.

People are people the world over, and the necessity was not to present these characters in such a way that you don’t identify with them and you don’t feel alienated by them, like you were watching some weird historical film.

One of my favourite lines in the film is; ‘of course it’s work. I’m the work of your life and you are the work of my life,’. I think that’s such a wonderfully truthful statement about marriage and relationships.

- You seem so busy these days, do these wonderful opportunities simply come your way or do you have to root them out?

I don’t like saying no to wonderful opportunities it’s true. When The Last Station was first sent to me it wasn’t at all certain that the film was going to be made.

Anthony Hopkins was originally lined up to play Tolstoy, but then he couldn’t do it because he was shooting another film and none of us seemed sure whether it was going to continue. But I kept the flame alive in my heart because I wanted to do this one, I wanted to play this role.

And in terms of scheduling, it’s weird, things all get packed together, you go ‘boom, boom, boom, boom,’ and then you don’t do anything for six months. Then they all come out at the same time so it looks like you’re working all the time but you’re not actually. But I have been extremely lucky, especially in the last year or two.

- Did the pressure of you playing a character whose descendents will be watching the film prey on your mind at all?

There are an enormous number of Tolstoys in the world. There’s the American Tolstoys, the European Tolstoys, the Italian Tolstoys, the Australian Tolstoys - it’s a massive family. There’s an awful lot of people to tell you off or give you ticks. I think mostly we got ticks from them.

I think they were very happy to see Sofya’s character kind of rehabilitated, because as I understand it within the Tolstoy intelligentsia of people who follow Tolstoy there is a prejudice against Sofya.

But the Tolstoy family who understood that Sofya was fighting for them, for the family, at that time  felt very differently about her, so I think they’re very pleased to see her rehabilitated to a certain extent. We don’t make her out to be an angel, but at least you can see her point of view.

- It’s a strength of everyone’s work on The Last Station that it can be enjoyed whether or not the audience is familiar with Tolstoy’s life or not, wherever in the world they might be, don’t you think?

Film is a very universal language, when a film is good and it communicates it communicates universally. I imagine it would be a terrible mistake to write a film thinking ‘I’m going to write this for the Americans,’ or ‘I’m going to write this for the Europeans,’. You just have to write a film for human beings and then. if it’s good, it will travel.

The Last Station is out on DVD 21st June

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