Diary – 9 August 2008

One of the great adventures of being an actor is filming abroad, when suddenly you have the opportunity not only to visit, but actually to work somewhere else; to feel temporarily part of another city’s fabric rather than floating along its surface. This, then, comes to you from glorious, sweltering Rome, or more precisely from the Cavalieri Hilton, whose view over this ancient, unreal city, is quite breathtaking.

I’m here doing costume fittings for The Red Priest, a movie shooting later this summer. Luca, my tailor at Farani, the historical costumiers, is clearly a genius but has perhaps something of the demonic about him. As he laces my 18th-century corset, my waist seems miraculously to have shrunk to the size of Keira Knightley’s, but at some point my eyeballs must be popping out of my skull and my face turning purple because the director Liana shrieks, ‘Luca! Loosen it!’ Luca looks dismayed.