HOTSEAT I am the most unsentimental person you could meet

TV thriller Fearless sees Helen McCrory battling for justice as a human rights lawyer.

finds out how eavesdropping on the Tube kickstarted the 48-year-old actress’ research so fascinating because he couldn’t be less establishment if he tried.

He’s as happy fixing a watch and repairing an ancient firearm as he is acting. I DON’T know if he wrote any of the episodes that my husband (Homeland actor Damian Lewis) was in, but I never met him. This is in no way comparable to Homeland.

One thing that Patrick brings, as a man who has been writing in America, is that Americans eat plot so quickly in a way we don’t necessarily. We tend to drive stuff through character.

Frankly, we have more happening in episode one than a lot of series have happening in all six episodes. WEIRDLY, I was sitting on the Tube one morning going to rehearsals for the job I was doing before this and heard this man chatting.

I jumped off the Tube and followed him down Fleet Street and then said ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I couldn’t help overhear your conversation. Are you a human rights lawyer?’ And he went ‘Yes.’ So I said ‘Well, I’m about to play one. Can I talk to you?’

This guy, Adam Wagner, turns out to be not only a top human rights lawyer, but he also founded a website giving information about human rights and the law. He pointed me in the direction of various people who I could listen to. I also listened to things like the OJ Simpson trial. I’M ABOUT the most unsentimental person I’ve ever met.

For the title shots they asked me to try and find a photograph and they were horrified to discover I only had six photos of myself before the age of 22. I had a very peripatetic childhood and therefore I’m not sentimental about places or things. THEY wanted an older actress, one that had been politicised by Maggie Thatcher, as Patrick Harbinson had, because, like her or loathe her, she politicised a generation.

I’d go on the anti-poll tax marches and the apartheid matches and was very much part of a politically active college. And then I watched my daughter, who is 10, getting her placard out together with her three friends and marching down with mum and her godmother to support equal rights for women recently in London. I WENT to America every 11 days for 24 hours throughout the entire shoot because my husband and my kids were in America. I would come back, get off the plane and go straight to work. SOME people’s idea of privacy now is very strange because they don’t see it as invasion of privacy to film you. I’ve been filmed on the Tube, on the buses, on the street without any permission being asked. Or people just take a photograph of you when you are talking without asking. Or they ask and you say ‘No, I’m just in the middle of trying to pick up my crying child who has fallen off a scooter.’ Yes, people’s whole idea of privacy is very different.’ I DON’T tweet, I don’t have Facebook, I don’t do Snapchat. I don’t have any of these things because I think these are really unhelpful to everybody. To believe that life is airbrushed and perfect, of course, they’re not. I’m constantly telling my children that they will have as much pain as they will have happiness in life and they should never try to avoid it. This anaesthetising of our brains or ourselves is really unhelpful.