NEIL MASKELL

Bull must have been fun to play. Did you lick your lips?

I was always trying to root it, to feel his anger. Like, Jack Nicholson is brilliant as the Joker and we can all have a moustache twiddle, but actually, on this piece, if I did lick my lips, we’d be in trouble. I could have tilted over into cartoonish-ness.

But he does have crazy, over-the-top moments, like when he’s laughing hysterically on the Waltzer…

For the last take, I said to Paul [Andrew

Williams, director], “I really feel like I want to look at the lens. Have I gone fucking mad?” Paul said, “Do it.” I said, “I’m really gonna cut loose.” It felt like that’s where the catharsis was, in this spinning madness. And truthfully, I did enjoy doing that!

Shooting violence can be tedious and technical for an actor, but are you ever shocked when you see the finished film?

It is very technical. I’ve never thought, ‘This is horrible,’ while shooting violence, apart from hitting Mark Kempner in the head with the hammer in Kill List. And when I saw it in the film, I went [pained, sickened voice],

‘Cor, dear, fucking hell.” JG