David Thewlis: He has a very relaxed nature. Every time you walked on set you felt like you were the person he was most pleased to see that day. So he gives you an enormous amount of confidence. Alfonso's very passionate, and very involved. I saw that as the time went on, he got more and more involved in the actual handling of the camera. He's very, very energetic, very light, and a very humorous man.

David Thewlis: Even up in Scotland; they'd been up there for weeks before I arrived, the weather was terrible, and I saw him again, after not seeing him for weeks. He was up on a hillside with his big coat on, in the rain, and his beard was dripping, but he was still smiling and he was still very enthused about the whole thing. I expected to see him dejected and it would all have got to him. But no.

He's wonderful with the kids as well; I think he's got quite a child's mentality. He can really bring himself down to correspond with them on their level, without being patronizing.

Gary Oldman: But he's passionate, and there's an enthusiasm. He takes energy from that passion and you get contaminated by it. If you're only have an okay day, you know once you get on set and you get around Alfonso he really gets it out of you. It's like his heart is in the film, he's inside the film.

Gary Oldman: There was a moment when we were doing the Shrieking Shack, we were in this one set for three weeks; then we went away and we did something else, and about two weeks later we came back and picked up different pieces of it. That in itself was challenging. We were on that set and there was a moment there where I thought, how will this cut together?