Emily Mortimer: tired of movies where all the explosiveness comes from special effects? Try this actress

Interview, July, 2002 by Graham Fuller

GF: I've noticed from articles I've read about you that you tend to be very self deprecating in a jokey way. And you're very funny in that English sense, but it made me wonder if you lacked confidence.

EM: It's definitely easy fodder for a psychoanalyst. I think it's some sort of self-protective mechanism. It can be quite boring and I think I've started to grow out of it because telling people you're crap wastes a lot of time. [laughs] But I've always done it. Catherine [Keener] says she does it, too. She said to me, "I normally tell everybody that I'm shit in [a film] or at least play it down, because I feel like a fool if I boast about it." But Lovely & Amazing is definitely the thing I'm proudest of. It's impossible not to be excited on behalf of Nicole and her little film, which I'm lucky to be a part of

Graham Fuller is Interview's Film Writer at Large.