British actor Christian McKay steps straight into the deep end with his first film role, starring in Me and Orson Welles, where he stars as the famous director alongside Zac Efron and Claire Danes. Recently in London to promote the film, Christian talks about purple sofas, being criticised by eight-year-olds and being too thin to play Orson Welles.

You get to play Orson Welles, who's this kind of egotistical genius and yet this is your first film role. Did you have to come on blazing, full of confidence, yet inside slightly nervous about the whole thing?
Christian McKay (CM): Well, I was very lucky, because I was playing a character who did have that extraordinary confidence. And he talked about the confidence of ignorance - I had the ignorance, he had the confidence. I was very lucky to – you know, I think if I'd been playing myself or a variant of myself, I'd have been scared to death and totally intimidated but I had this character that I could, well, hide behind, I suppose. Somebody asked me yesterday, “Were you intimidated to be working with these extraordinary stars and one of the world's greatest directors?” and I said, you know, to be honest, no, simply because I was playing one of the world's greatest directors and I was playing one of the world's greatest stars, but take that mask off and I'm like jelly. Petrified.

You'd played Orson Welles before, on stage, is that right? Is that how they found you? You weren't just someone who looked like Orson Welles and then you got this part?
CM: I didn't want to play him before, it's just that through total unemployment, somebody suggested to me that I might think about a one-man show that we could take to Edinburgh, you know, a relatively cheap form of theatre. And I'd never played a real life person before, so I thought, oh, that would be a very good exercise for me, to see if I could give a flavour and avoid imitation and impression, which is vital if you're playing a real-life person. So they said, “So, now, Orson Welles,” and I said, “Don't be ridiculous, I'm not that fat!” because I think to my generation, we remember him as this extraordinary, gargantuan man and ego.

So I said, “What about Richard Burton?” [drops into note-perfect Richard Burton impression] “You know, I'd quite like to do a bit of Richard, you know, that sort of thing.” “No, no, Orson Welles, you look nothing like Burton.” I said, “Well, what about Peter Sellers,” [drops into Peter Sellers impression] “I could do Clouseau as, you know...” “No, no, what about Orson Welles?” I said, “Churchill?” [drops into note-perfect Alec Guinness impression] “Sir Alec Guinness? I might like to have a go at him, you know, something like that.” I even went to Kenneth Williams, [drops into note-perfect Kenneth Williams impression] “I said yesss, I'd love to do that, I could give a flaaavour of Ken,” they said, “Christian, you're fifteen times his size.” So I started reading about Orson and of course then you get obsessed and I fell in love with the old man. Although, in the theatre, I could happily have put his head through a television screen at times.

How did you find the locals in the Isle of Man?
CM: I found them incredibly welcoming. Very much. And I found out while I was there, my mother came over to see some of the filming and I was already thinking it was a rather magical place for me, being able to make my first film there, but she said, “Me and your dad actually came to the Isle of Man on honeymoon – you were conceived 'ere.” So whenever I'm down on my luck, I'm taking the boat back to that island, I really am.

That's a lot of information...
CM: Well, I'm an open book.

Zac's character has to audition in the street in the film. What's the worst audition you've ever done?
CM: Oh, there are so many and mostly in Soho. I remember coming out of RADA and doing an audition, one of those dreadful auditions for adverts – I think it was for IKEA furniture. And I walked in and I had to attack a purple blow-up sofa. I didn't get it. At all. There are so many. Painful to think about. But I like the notion of failing – I think that's incredibly important to any artist. You know, walking along the tightrope, it's vital that you learn to pick yourself up and learn from your mistakes and get back on the tightrope, but you've got to fail, absolutely, because how will you learn otherwise?

In the film we see Orson Welles being very sensitive to critical reaction. How much notice do you take of your own reviews and how do you feel when you get a bad review?
CM: I used to say on the stage, of much more experienced colleagues, I used to think they were strange not to read their own reviews. “Oh, I can't possibly read my reviews, Christian.” I always wondered why. And I kind of take a certain masochistic pleasure in reading a terrible thing, “Oh, Christian McKay was absolutely atrocious,” I'd throw it out, I'd go back on stage that night and try to be better. And so I'd always read them. But film is so totally different, because at Toronto, when we first showed the film, there was something, I don't know, about 500 reviews. And they ranged from somebody like Roger Ebert, an eminent film historian, film critic, to an eight-year-old blogger in a garage, typing away. “He doesn't look anything like…” you know, whatever.

And so I thought, I can now understand those colleagues who don't read reviews because it would send you utterly mad. So I stopped reading. I've got this really lovely idea in my head of being an old man and suddenly taking this sheet of reviews and, forty years later, going, “Son of a bitch – I don't agree with that one,” and reading them then from a safe distance, I suppose. Because on film, you can't go on that night and change it and be better, it's done, it's finished.

Are there any funny stories that happened while you were filming this?
CM: None that we can talk about [laughter].