I am good at pretending. When I was at school I often forged stuff. 
In The Counterfeiters, Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a skilled forger who, during WWII, is captured and interned in a concentration camp in Berlin. Salomon, along with other Jewish printers and forgers, is forced to produce millions in counterfeit money, in a bid to destablise British and American economies. Here, Markovitz talks about the character of Sorowitsch, his true life counterpart, and what author Adolf Burger thought of the adaptation of his book.
Salomon Sorowitsch is a very complex character. How did you get into his head?
It's very easy for me, but he is not someone that people can understand very easily. I read a lot about that time. Not just because of this character, but I've always been interested in everything around me.
You have to try to forget all your knowledge and rely on imagination. Sorowitsch is not an intellectual, he is not a man with political sense or a sense of society or of the circumstances around him. He doesn't want to be known too much. These are things that serve me more than studies of history.
What do you find appealing about him?
What I like about him is that he is really not a good guy, but he has some principles. He would never say something against his own people. In this case [that means] all the guys in that counterfeiting unit. On the one hand he is the lone wolf, but on the other hand he has a need for family. The people he's connected with, he protects, because they are part of his special world.
Through all the history I created around him, I started to like him. There are many sides to him that we cannot see. I like that.
What has been the response from the author of the book, Adolf Berger?
He once visited on set, but I just said hello because it was really strange to have this 90-year-old man who had survived all this, in this [set] which was supposed to represent his memories, his life, but was just a movie set. But afterwards I met him and we talked a lot. I am very proud that he always calls me his best friend, because the real Salomon Smolianof was his best friend. He liked the movie very much, and he liked the way I created a different Salomon.
Why do you think filmmakers return to the War and it's aftermath?
It's not just a historic story. I think we tried to do more than just a story about Nazi murderers and Jewish victims. This is a story about human beings, about human conditions.
We always want the victim to be a good person, but while Sorowitsch is a victim, he's not exactly a good person. But he doesn't deserve his fate. It's not only the view into the past that is important here, but the view into human beings.
How good at forgery are you?
I am good! You have to be very honest to be a good liar. I am good at pretending. When I was at school I often forged stuff. But I had another way of doing it. I wrote, with a typewriter, a letter from my school about sports uniform that needed my mother's signature. This I would then use for all sorts of things. So I didn't forge it directly, but I did some tricks to get it.
The Counterfeiters opens in UK cinemas on Friday 12th October 2007.
