The Golden Compass is an adventure, but its also dealing with some interesting themes. Was that part of the appeal?

Yes it was. My fantasy for this movie was those movies I saw as a kid that scared me. Speilberg’s films always did that... they had fantasy and action and there was always a moment that scared the ***t out of you and he is so clever like that. And with this, there are some very adult themes, there are some scary moments for Lyra’s character and its dealing with interesting subjects and with proper emotions. And if we get that right it will work really well and its going to be kind of dark enough as a movie to properly entertain.

Is there a bit of the Victorian adventurer about your character Lord Asriel in the film?

Yes, there is a little bit of the Shackleton in there. He’s a scientist, so the adventuring is only a means to an end. Like Sir Ranulph Fiennes who can run seven marathons in seven days and then climb the Eiger and he has a certain element of that. But once he gets there its scientific experiments that are important to him.

Is that a bit of a Daniel Craig alter ego that likes that kind of adventure?

There’s part of me that like it. We have just been filming on the glacier in Switzerland underneath the Jungfrau.

Flying up on a helicopter and staying up there all day. We were so high that we couldn’t have walked down and if bad weather had grounded the helicopter, we would have had to stay up there. Actually there’s part of me that would have quite liked to be trapped up there for a couple of days (laughs). There was a little hut that we would have stayed in— and I was happy to hear that there were a few beers in the fridge!

It seems that Nicole Kidman will provide some of those scary moments?

She is pretty good at it (laughs), she looks amazing in it and she is really good in it. Her character is really nicely done.

Nicole and I are quite good friends now. So it’s very easy to work together. We did say that we would like to do a kitchen drama sometime because we’ve kind of done aliens and other worlds (laughs). We’d like to do something with more talking in it, but we’ll get there.

Could you have seen yourself taking a role like this, say, five or six years ago?

It’s a weird one. I don't know whether I would have thought about doing it a few years ago. It's a huge movie and it’s a ‘kids movie’, so called. But these books aren’t they are something else, there’s so much going on.

And whether or not we can get all of that into the movie is a moot point because we are going to have to get a rating and these ideas are quite complex and quite controversial if you put it into certain context.

But it’s there and they raise great debate and everybody keeps saying on the Catholic Church is going to have a big problem with it. Well, I think that the Catholic Church is going to have broad enough shoulders for this. It’s going to serve them because people will start talking about it.

You’re referring to the books and the themes of organised religion. What’s your take on that?

My take is that there is a fundamental right to discuss all sorts of things— absolutely fundamental. Particularly at the moment with the way the world is all we’re saying is ‘let’s raise this up’ and faith always needs a question, it needs to be questioned. For me, these books are incredibly spiritual and at the core of them they cling on to the story of creation, they actually do cling on to it.

But it is also about growing up, about being a human being and figuring out who you are and becoming better of that.

And these are total Christian principles and to see anything else in that I think is because people haven’t read them and they hear something and they make a judgment on it.

But it will be there, it’s just that it’s having to be done as a movie, so we will have to be subtle and it will have to be an adventure story and that’s what Philip Puliman wrote and that’s what will be on screen.

And hopefully we will have little bits of messages going on to say ‘what about this? What about that?’ and asking a few questions. And if you look closely enough you’ll find them. It can’t be that controversial I wish it could. At its heart it’s a story about the right to be able to understand. Fundamentally. At the bottom of it, it’s saying okay, that’s one way of looking at life but there might be another way and it won’t destroy us, it will make us better.

Did you meet Philip Pullman?

Plenty of times. We e-mail a lot still. He is fascinating and passionate which is really what I wanted. We sat and had a meal and I wouldn’t say we got drunk, but we certainly had a couple of glasses of red wine and the
conversation just started getting going (laughs).

He feels very passionately about his subject about the books, obviously but also passionate about life and I really like the man. I’m a huge admirer of his obviously and genuinely like him very much. It’s been a total privilege.