Colin Firth Video Interview On ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’

Not very much. I suppose subliminally over the years you process that world and its vernacular and the protocols and how people behave, and that you absorb it, but I didn't really study it as a way to do this. One of the things that struck me is how physically different we all are from the cast, then, and Gary does not look like Alec Guinness, I don't think I look like Ian Richardson, and so forth. In some way that's liberating, because you can't possibly emulate them or feel pressurized to do so, but I think what you do absorb is a kind of gentlemanly-ness with which these affairs are conducted, you know. They could be talking about transportation planning, but they're actually talking about probably the security of the nation and possibly the western world, etc., and matters of life and death, and I think there's something quite fascinating about the kind of cool detachment with which that happens.

You find something in the character, even if you don't like them, and I do like Bill in a lot of ways. He's vain. He's someone who actually I think finds crisis enjoyable and he sees humor in most situations. I find that appealing, you know. I like to choose that route myself, if possible, and I think he handles things with great authority and great aplomb, and I'm not saying that I'm capable of doing that, but I do find those things attractive. He's also a terrible poser and I'm an actor, so.

The book. The book has all the information you need. I mean, I have so few lines in the film, and so little screen time, that I didn't need much more than the book's 350 pages to supplement it, really. You know, I think the stimuli that were provided by Tomas Alfredson in the form of how he glittered, and what the extraordinary set looked like, and what the costumes gave us, and what we innately gained, what we carried from the work that we primarily or secondarily [did] over the years, were basically all the material that we needed.