ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Ever since securing an Oscar nomination for Primal Fear, Edward Norton has developed a reputation for playing edgy, intense characters in films like American History X, Fight Club and, most recently, Down In The Valley.

But he likes to diversify and his latest, The Painted Veil, is a long-cherished project that finds him playing the romantic lead. He explains to ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Movies why the film means so much to him...

You have stuck with The Painted Veil for over seven years. Does that mean you've always had great faith in the material?

The longer I've worked in films the more I realise as an actor you tend to get handed things when things are pretty much ready to crack. Sometimes you don't even know how long things have been incubating. But it's more normal for things to go through a lot of germination. This one was particularly long, but it was for all the reasons you might imagine. We spent a good bit of time in the beginning just developing the script and finding the financing. Even when Naomi [Watts] was interested in doing it we had a hard time finding a slot in which she, myself or any director weren't working. It takes time to have the pieces click into place.

Did the script change much during that time?

I think the script went through three major evolutions. Ron Nyswaner wrote it and wrote an excellent adaptation that very directly reflected the book. But he and the original producer, Sara Colleton, had a difficult time finding support for that because I think that while the book is brilliant, as a story it's extremely claustrophobic. Really, if you were just to film a rendition of the book you could film it in Shepperton. There was really no need to go to China.

The second big phase was my contribution to it on script level. I came in and said to Ron that part of what needs to happen is it has to be inspired by the themes but the scope of it has to be expanded - both emotionally and even in terms of its view of China. There was really no point in going otherwise. So Ron and I worked for about a year along those general lines, maybe a year and a half. When John [Curran, director] came on he brought an enormous amount of new specificity and new inspiration to it and anchored it in the specific history of the mid 20s in China, what with the May Martyrs revolution and the enormous wave of anti-foreign resentment that swept the country. It opened up this whole second level to the metaphor of the film in a way, because it became much more about western people mucking around in other peoples' countries, telling them how to fix them and wondering why they're not being thanked.

Were there any problems with shooting in China?

We had to go to China and John and I were adamant that there was no other alternative. As it turns out, that's good on a financial level because you can stretch the money in China. We made the film for just over $20 million, which is quite modest these days. In the main, I would say that the trade offs and difficulties from working in China were far outweighed by the opportunity of getting down into that landscape and filming where no Chinese films had even filmed. It was a unique opportunity and it was absolutely worth it.

Ironically, the biggest difficulties that we had were not with the logistics of working in China. The Chinese crews are incredible, the film industry there is very well developed and these people will work so passionately. The work ethic is phenomenal. We had nothing but great things to say about our Chinese colleagues in making the film. It was more with the vicissitudes of working with the Chinese government and the film bureau having approval rights that amazingly had been granted by Warner Bros in what I believe was a pretty singular kind of an agreement to give a foreign government substantial approval over a film. Those came to a head in some very unpleasant ways. But I think it's a total testament to John Curran and his courage, especially at this early stage in his career, that he dug his heels in absolutely resolutely and refused to let those dynamics compromise the film. He won those debates so that we didn't suffer this terrible incursion into the integrity of the film.

Have you had any feedback from [The Painted Veil author] Somerset Maugham's family about the film?

We got a really nice letter from Maugham's grandchildren saying that this was their favourite of the films that had been made of his books. That was gratifying because we had taken some liberties with it, but they seemed to feel that the spirit of it was very much intact.

You don't often appear in romantic films. Are you a fan of the romantic genre?

I certainly am of films like Out of Africa or the David Lean films. I tend to find something more meaningful in films that I think are real, that have some sort of universal quotient to them or that are really a study of the eternal dynamics between men and women. I think the reason Out of Africa holds up as a 'romantic film' is that it's really about loss. It's not about romantic consummation, it's about a woman confronted with the fact that she can't hold on to things, not possessions or property or even this man.

The dynamics between those characters are ones that I think people can still relate to. So, you get the romance of period and place, and the exoticism of it, but there's something in it that I think people can recognise themselves in. And I like that - it's what I tend to respond to. I don't tend to respond to the people who meet through a wedding planner, or whose dogs get their leashes tangled. Those things haven't happened to me yet, so I don't.

The Painted Veil opens in UK cinemas on Friday 27th April 2007.