What was it like wandering around a deserted London for the opening of "28 Days Later"?
It was great. It looks deserted but at the edge of the frame people were going nuts trying to get to work, and there were casualties from the night before hanging around. It was great, because you walk around those places all the time, all those landmarks in London, and it's so strange not to see them when it's not frenetic and bonkers.
There's a scene where you gouge someone's eyes out. How do you prepare yourself for that?
That was quite difficult because I didn't want it to be like, "Die Hard", you know what I mean? It was hard to justify that all happening. But if you get it clear in your head, it makes sense. He has to take control. And there's the allegorical element of it, which is that he is acting like the infected and we all have access to that place, the dark place, that rage.
Do you think you could be as ruthless as your character?
I don't know. I think having to protect loved ones, you don't really know where you would go in that situation... It's all hypothetical, but I'd say you could access places there. I'd say anybody could. And that's what the film is investigating.
The scene where Jim discovers his parents' corpses must have been a horror to shoot...
Well, I didn't see the bodies until I actually opened the door. It was genuinely the first time I'd seen them. And also, they'd done this fantastic thing, they had created the smell in the room - the smell of decomposing bodies. So you went in there and saw that and there was this smell.
What's your favourite horror movie?
"The Shining". That film still freaks me out, the lift and the girls... I can't watch it.
