HOW PATTY COWED HER CO-STARS . . .

PATRICIA CLARKSON is blessed with a voice that she can use to great effect: for seduction, or as a weapon. In the delicious political satire The Party, Clarkson — playing April, a takeno-prisoners literary agent — was given permission by director Sally Potter to lock and load her words. And then fire them, at point blank range, at the other characters, played by Kristin Scott Thomas (as a newly promoted Shadow Cabinet minister), Bruno Ganz (April’s partner), Timothy Spall (Scott Thomas’s professor husband), Emily Mortimer and Cherry Jones (as an expectant academic couple) and Cillian Murphy (a deranged banker). ‘Sally said the words have to come fast and furious, and they have to hit the bullseye,’ said Clarkson (pictured). She was speaking from New Orleans, her home town, where she’s playing a veteran detective in Out Of Blue, director Carol Morley’s adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel Night Train. ‘April’s had lovers and partners, and commands the moral high ground because she never succumbed to any of the norms of life — marriage and children. ‘And no matter your sexual preferences, she can’t bear you being married or having children.’ Clarkson (a short list of her pictures include Far From Heaven, The Station Agent, Shutter Island and the Netflix drama House Of Cards) calls April a ‘once-in-alifetime character’, and felt flattered when Potter offered her the role. But she found it a challenge being so cruel to people that she liked in real life — even if it was just for the cameras. ‘I had to show up every day, knowing I was going to eviscerate people. I turned up on the set, every day for two weeks, and berated my favourite actors. ‘I always had to apologise after,’ she joked. She would go back to her dressing room, ‘undress and take off April’, then head back to the hotel and have a glass of rosé with Cherry Jones. Clarkson already knew Jones and Mortimer. ‘All us girls hung out one afternoon and larks were had,’ she said. The sublime film was shot in London and it’s that rare beast: a politically themed movie that’s also fun to watch.

The Party was screened at the BFI London Film Festival, and is in cinemas from today.