For part one of the interview, click the link below. In Revolutionary Road, you were being directed by your husband [Sam Mendes] and co-starring with an actor [Leonardo DiCaprio] with whom you'd worked before. Did that provide a kind of comfort zone, or did those aspects make it more challenging?
KW: For me, they definitely made it more challenging. The comfort zone factor really kicked in between Leo and I, and I just think that's because we know each other so well. We've known each other since we were 20 years old. I'm 33 now and he's 34 and that's over a third of our lives. So, to have that level of friendship, really, and trust between the two of us was really, really valuable. We felt physically comfortable together playing those parts. We also had to look after each other a lot because it was extremely difficult some days.

With Sam, because I didn't know what he was going to be like as a director... I sort of guessed and hoped that I'd have certain things revealed to me, but there was always the element of the unknown about him. But I did feel extremely understood. But he made all the actors feel like that - included and understood. He made them feel that their ideas about their characters were always more important sometimes than his own. What that does to you as a cast, and as a company, is sort of enforces this great sense of confidence to try anything and make mistakes but not be afraid to repair those mistakes and try something new.

Did this experience teach you something about Sam that you didn't know beforehand?
KW: I couldn't wait to see these other sides of Sam that might potentially be revealed to me because we hadn't worked together and I was getting a little bit impatient about it. I'd have Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Hanks and even Paul Newman when he was alive say to me: "Oh God, you've got to work with him!" And I'd say: "I know. Stop going on about it! I want to, I really want to!" But I did see other sides to him and that's only a great thing, to learn more about the person that you're sharing your life with. We walked away as a couple unscathed. We really, truly did. We survived it.

How hard was it to understand the characters you play in Revolutionary Road and The Reader, especially April, as a mother yourself? Was it difficult to get inside their heads and accept them?
KW: Yeah, acting is very difficult. As much as I love it, and the challenge of it, I'm so often just terrified by it. When it came to April, it was where to begin. It did really take me a while to fully understand her. With April, I was able to sympathise with her in ways that I never could with Hanna [Schmitz, from The Reader]. It's not natural to sympathise with an SS guard. With April, my sort of way into her was largely through the book, which I really never put down.

I would read the scene in the script first and then I'd immediately be going to the book just to make sure that I had as much information about her as possible, because she is incredibly complex. But when the source material is so sophisticated and so rich, you really don't want to leave anything out.