‘It was a beautiful, happy day,’ Law admits, with a broad smile. ‘A big lunch surrounded by all the people I love most in the world – my children, my parents, my sister, my nieces and nephews, my godparents. Dad made the loveliest speech… I felt very happy. Very at peace.’

Law has lived a lot in his relatively short life. Aged 17 he dropped out of school to start acting professionally in the Granada sitcom Families. At 22 he won the Ian Charleson Outstanding Newcomer Award for his performance in Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles at the National Theatre.

One year later, he had his first child, Rafferty, with Sadie Frost, whom he married the following year. In 1999, aged 24, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley. By the time he was 30, Law had three children and 17 films to his name and was widely considered to be one of the most bankable film stars in the world.

This success did not come without a price, and Law’s halo seemed to slip with every news story about his private life. After divorcing Frost in 2003, he embarked on a scandal-filled on-off-on-off engagement to Sienna Miller (they finally split up in 2011) and became a father for the fourth time in 2009 when a daughter, Sophia, was born as a result of a short-lived relationship with the American model Samantha Burke.

Unfortunately for Law, this has often meant that the public has overlooked his professional achievements during the past decade – 23 further films, not to mention a critically acclaimed return to the stage (for which he was nominated for two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award). He has also used his public profile to positive effect with his charitable work. According to Jeremy Gilley, the founder of the peace movement Peace One Day, it was absolutely thanks to Law’s presence on two trips to Afghanistan with him in 2007 and 2008 that Unicef and the World Health Organisation were able to vaccinate millions of children against polio on the days of agreed ceasefire that resulted.

Through all of this, Law has remained firmly committed to his work. His latest film, Side Effects, is – rather neatly – the 40-year-old’s 40th. His second collaboration with the prolific Steven Soderbergh (‘Working with him is too interesting a proposition to refuse’), it is a tightly plotted psychological thriller that is also a searing critique of the prescription drug culture in America.

In it Law plays Dr Jonathan Banks, a successful English psychiatrist whose life and work is derailed when his care for one of his young patients (Rooney Mara) badly backfires.

‘He is very, very good at playing a guy who is an obsessive, who has a bee in his bonnet about something,’ Soderbergh says. ‘He also loves to immerse himself in interesting subjects because he is curious about everything. One of my favourite things about Jude is that he’s not too cool to get excited about something.’

Speak to anyone who knows Law and they will attest to his energy, his determination to work harder, learn more, live life. ‘Yeah, and I only feel like I’m getting into my flow now,’ Law says. ‘Like I’ve only just scratched the surface of what I can do.’

It is a cold, snowy day in London and Law has walked – with only an overcoat and an oversized cashmere beanie hat for anonymity – from his home around the corner to the low-key cafe in which we meet. He is clean-shaven and clear-skinned and, although age is undeniably beginning its cruel creep around his eyes and his hairline, there is an irrepressible boyishness about him.

‘It feels like a very real time to take stock and make changes for the right reasons,’ he says of turning 40. ‘I’ve made an awful lot of decisions, deep down, about things I don’t want to repeat. I’ve thought about what I like and what I don’t like about myself and I’ve realised that there are sides of myself that only I can change.’

If Law’s life were a car, he says, he would be at biting point, that moment where the power is in the balance, and he could go forward, or he could go back. ‘And I feel like I can move forward now, propelled by everything that has gone before. But not bogged down by it, you know?’

On the inside of Law’s right forearm is tattooed a cluster of ants, a homage to Anthony Minghella, his great friend and mentor. The pair worked together three times – on The Talented Mr Ripley, Cold Mountain and Breaking and Entering – and Minghella was a tireless ambassador for Law’s talent. Shortly before he died, Minghella summed up what he believed to have been the biggest stumbling block to the young actor’s credibility: his extraordinary good looks. ‘Jude is a beautiful boy with the mind of a man,’ he said. ‘A true character actor struggling to get out of a beautiful body.’

Certainly, it can’t be a coincidence that Law’s credibility as an actor has taken a marked upward turn in the past five years. As he entered into the second half of his 30s, Law also seemed to enter into a more serious and productive working phase. As his golden good looks started – inevitably – to lose their glow, Law seemed liberated, turning in his most layered and interesting performances to date. On stage, his 2009 Hamlet, directed by the Donmar Warehouse’s then artistic director Michael Grandage, was acclaimed as ‘spellbinding’ by The Daily Telegraph’s theatre critic Charles Spencer while his performance the following year as a shipwrecked Irish stoker, Mat, in Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie was considered by Michael Billington in the Guardian as ‘a breakthrough’ that would ‘release Law from the tyranny of always being seen as the good-looking lead man’.

When the subject of his gilded cage comes up, Law laughs self-consciously. ‘It’s funny… I don’t know whether I was in my own prison – or should I say constraint? Constraint is better. Or whether that constraint was put on me by the film industry. But certainly, yes, in the last couple of years, I have felt a freedom, which has been very fulfilling.’

In last year’s Anna Karenina, Joe Wright’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic novel, Law’s was the standout performance. Whereas a few years previously he would have been cast as Anna’s dashing, destructive lover, Vronsky, Law took on the role of her repressed, controlling husband, Karenin. Thin and pinched, with small round glasses and a receding hairline that he voluntarily had shaved for the part, Law’s Karenin was surprising and heartbreaking in equal measure. No one is happier than Law himself at this professional change of direction. ‘Unless you show people something different, they are not going to look at you differently, are they?’

In Dom Hemingway, a black comedy written and directed by Richard Shepard, and due for release later this year, Law gained almost two stone to play the title role, a bloated, balding petty criminal recently released from prison and back on the streets of London. In the photographs from the set, Law – who spent an indulgent summer eating and drinking whatever he wanted (‘10 Coca-Colas a day, amazing!) in preparation – is totally unrecognisable.

‘Oh, it was a joyous role to take on,’ he says, grinning. ‘Because I am at a stage in my life where I’m panicking a bit. “Ooh, am I going a bit bald? Am I getting a bit…?” You can’t help doing that in your late 30s, can you? When you realise that you’re no longer the 21-year-old you used to be. So playing someone who was letting it all go was really liberating. And actually – even better than that – now that I’ve lost the weight and my receding hairline isn’t quite as bad as we made it look for the part, I can look in the mirror and think, “Oh, it’s not that bad! I’m still looking all right, actually!”’

‘Jude is honestly one of the least vain people I’ve ever met,’ Shepard says. ‘There are two career paths he could have gone down – the fading matinee idol or the true actor who relishes the opportunity to get away from what they’ve been typecast as.’

‘Some people deal with getting older in a fantastically negative way which is, in itself, a kind of vanity,’ Grandage says. ‘But not Jude. As a man going into the second part of a life, he is feeling more at home in his body, more at home as a father and more at home as a human being than he ever did.’

With Rafferty now 16 (Iris is 12, and Rudy, 10) Law finds himself in the precarious position of parenting a teenager. ‘It makes me review my own life choices in a way that I never have before,’ he says. Law’s own childhood was a happy one. His parents, Maggie and Peter, were both teachers, who actively encouraged their children to have an interest in theatre and the arts (Law’s older sister, Natasha, is an artist). When Law landed the part in Families, they were calmly supportive of his decision to leave school and live in Manchester, where the series was being filmed.

‘I can’t believe that now,’ Law laughs. ‘It was so cool, and trusting of them.’ Law paints a picture of himself as a much more worrisome parent, anxious about educational choices, panicked at the thought of losing his beloved babies to adulthood, baffled by their addiction to new technology (Law himself is resistant; an iPhone 5, given to him as a present, sits still unopened on his desk, and is constantly vied for by all three).

Law has more cause than most to be an overprotective parent, having watched his children suffer the side-effects of their father’s fame. For years in the 2000s, he was shadowed by the paparazzi wherever he went, with the innermost details of his private life exposed by the tabloids. Law veered between paranoia and rage, regularly having his house swept for bugs, occasionally reacting violently to the photographers. But nothing could stop the stories: love triangles, infidelities, broken engagements, DNA tests. Any career successes were secondary.

And then, at the end of 2010, Law got a call from Scotland Yard. They had uncovered the notes taken by a private investigator who had been hired by the News of the World to pry into the lives of public figures. Among these notes were every aspect of Law’s life – his credit card details, the phone numbers of his friends and family, transcripts of voicemail messages left and received by him.

Emboldened by this unsettling evidence, Law sued the paper’s publisher, Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, and settled, last January, for £130,000 and a public apology. Interestingly, he decided against testifying at the Leveson inquiry.

‘I felt like this whole thing had been about trying to preserve and recreate some kind of privacy,’ he said later. ‘I didn’t want to be on TV talking about my life.’ When the subject comes up, Law visibly stops himself from being drawn into it. ‘I desperately don’t want to be the guy that keeps going on about it, because I think we all know now. Thank God. We all know what was done. And it certainly feels to me, in terms of my own life, that the worst is over.’

For all his reasons to be cynical, Law – who is currently single – retains a tangible optimism. ‘Can you be cynically optimistic?’ he says, laughing. ‘No, I’m not sure you can. And yes, if I had to choose one of those things, I would choose optimism, because I do still, rightly or wrongly, believe in the innate goodness of life and humanity.’

At the moment, as he prepares to play Shakespeare’s Henry V in Michael Grandage’s autumn production, this is a subject that particularly interests Law. ‘The idea of playing Henry intrigues me, because here is the ultimate mythical hero being played to an audience living in a world that is desperately short of heroes. We have, I think, been short of inspirational leaders for a long time now; someone who leads the few to face the many.’ ‘Jude has a belief system,’ Grandage says, ‘that, at its most basic level, is founded on trying to be good and wanting to understand the nature of how difficult it is to be full of integrity in the world that we live in now.’

Law has already started his preparation for the role in earnest. ‘I’ve got a lot better at knowing what I have to do to make myself feel ready,’ he says, and this – he is refreshingly un­ashamed to admit – involves accepting all the help he can get. ‘I have an acting coach. I have a vocal coach… I take it seriously. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it properly. What’s the point otherwise?’

There was a moment, during the Anna Christie rehearsal period – which he was performing at the Donmar – two years ago, when Law suffered a crisis of confidence. ‘I was prowling around my house practising my thick west-coast Irish accent. I was big and built up with a bushy beard and, just in a moment, I caught myself and I thought, “What are you doing? Who are you fooling? This is going to be a disaster!” It was an all-consuming panic and I sat down, and I thought that the only possible way I could get out of it was to keep working at it, and hopefully I would come out on the other side.

‘What I realised in that moment,’ he continues, ‘was the most crucial thing I could ever have learnt, which is that fear is a good thing. And the reason it’s a good thing is because there is only one way out of it, and that is to work harder, commit more, and believe in what you’re doing. The fear comes from having been kicked about a bit.’ He laughs. ‘Which means, of course, that that kicking hasn’t been for nothing. That actually, it’s been a good thing. And that, in turn, makes it much easier to bear.’

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‘I’m 40! I’m an adult!” shouts Jude Law. “Aren’t I?” We hold these truths to be self-evident, I reply, as the actor, laughing, stares across the table with those adorable baby blues and more hair than’s fair. “But,” he says more quietly, “part of me thinks I can’t play a doctor. Who would come to me?”

You’ve got to be kidding. Who wouldn’t come to Dr Jude? In Steven Soderbergh’s film Side Effects, Law plays an Englishman in New York, a slimy limey of a pill-dispensing psychiatrist who becomes entangled in murder, drug switcheroos, a risible lesbian insider trading scam and lots more vaguely voguish, putatively Hitchkockian hokum before the credits. Astute critics have compared this performance with the one Law gave in the 2004 film I Heart Huckabees, where he played a shallow business exec in psychic meltdown. “The de-smugging of Jude Law is yet again a dramatic motor to swear by,” wrote the Daily Telegraph. Quite so: seeing Dr Jude losing his Brit cool when wrong-footed by faux-innocent Rooney Mara or handbagged by crackers shrink Catherine Zeta-Jones is worth the price of admission alone.

We’re sitting in a conference room at the Guardian in London’s Kings Cross. For an hour his PR chaperones have left him alone with the clown who once inadvertently cycled into the canal we can see from the window. If Law sacks his minders later, that would be understandable.

Between us is a pill bottle whose label says it contains 20mg capsules of a new antidepressant called Ablixa. Perhaps if the media inquisition gets too much, you could neck some, even if the directions explicitly state “Take ONE daily” and warn that side-effects include sleepwalking and insomnia. “But they look like Smarties!” says Law. That’s because they are Smarties. The PR people for Side Effects, which deals with the perils of prescription drugs, handed out the bottles at the press screening the night before. Nice gag. One could barely concentrate on the final credits for the rattling of antidepressants as the hacks scrambled out of the cinema.

“Are you sure they’re Smarties?” asks Law, examining them. That’s what the PR person said. “Maybe give them to the kids and then see how they feel.” Yes, indeed, that would be the responsible thing to do, Dr Jude. If you wanted your medical licence shredded.

Like Tigger, Law seems in a jaunty mood today. “On the whole I’m happy. What’s not to be well adjusted about? I tell you what helps me – running. I’ve always liked to have a couple of fags and a few drinks and look after myself – the best of both worlds, you know? But recently I’ve really got into running – it clears my brain.”

Let’s unbounce Tigger with some questions about that most dismal of subjects, media ethics. What is your life like post-Leveson, now that phone-hacking is history and some of Murdoch’s evil henchpeople have been reined in? “My life is much less harassed, thank goodness,” says Law. How come? “Because the the root has been cut off so it doesn’t feed the poisonous little plant that was growing, do you know what I mean? Without headlines they’ve no need for ridiculous photos of me opening a gate and getting into a car. So that’s all gone. What a blessing!”

It’s just over a year since the actor accepted damages of £130,000 plus legal costs from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for its repeated hacking of his phone between 2003 and 2006. Initially, Law suspected friends and family of leaking personal details about his personal life to the tabloids. He changed phones repeatedly, hired security consultants who swept his home and car for bugs, but still the stories about his private life kept appearing. Only in 2011, when police replayed him vociemails left by his children’s nanny, did Law realise the extent and nature of the intrusion – what his lawyer called “a sustained campaign of surveillance, pursuit and harassment”.

But the legal profession and the police didn’t come out of this smelling of roses either. Law told the Observer in 2003 that when he was living in Primrose Hill with his then wife, actor Sadie Frost, and their children, the police betrayed them. “There were two instances where the police called for whatever reason and they sold the stories, telling lies.” In that year, too, the affadavit of his decree nisi ending his marriage with Frost was sent from the high court to a tabloid before it reached him.

Nor, though, did Law play a blinder during those phone-hacking years. In 2005, it was revealed that he was having an affair with his children’s nanny, Daisy Wright, while engaged to actor Sienna Miller. His by then ex-wife Frost reportedly sacked Wright after one of their children caught the nanny and Law in bed together. Later Wright sold her story. “It was mind- blowing rampant sex,” she told the Sunday Mirror. “He is a great lover and he knows how to satisfy a woman.” No doubt, but that press coverage prompted his mea culpa to Miller. “Following the reports in today’s papers,” he said in a statement in July 2005, “I just want to say I am deeply ashamed and upset that I’ve hurt Sienna and the people most close to us.”

Law in those years certainly wasn’t mere victim. “Don’t tell me there isn’t anyone who has done things they regret, or done things they shouldn’t have,” he said a couple of years ago. “Or done things that are silly. Or said silly things. That’s life, right? That’s what’s wonderful about life. We all do this stuff we shouldn’t do.”

Today Law declines to talk about those wild Primrose Hill years. Instead he gives an appealing performance of an older, wiser, more humble Tigger – and one who also feels more hopeful than he has for many years about the power of the press to ruin his life. “What’s going to be interesting, post-Leveson, is how long the head stays in the shell, how long before it pops out again. I don’t know, we’ll see.”

But has the root really been cut off? Arguably, the poisonous little plant is still growing. Jude may want to be obscure, but that seems an unrealisable dream. Just before Christmas he was papped walking down the street in Primrose Hill, going to a Greek restaurant with two of his children, their faces pixellated. A few weeks later, at the end of December, he had a 40th birthday party in Los Angeles. The Daily Mail joined the party mood with a story, headlined: “Midlife crisis? Jude Law turns 40 in Los Angeles – and new love is 26.” The story began: “Most men at risk of midlife crisis treat themselves to a flash new sports car – but not Jude Law.” Yeah, right, “most men”: during my many midlife crises I have scarcely treated myself to a second eclair.

On New Year’s Eve, Law and his sons were papped body-boarding in Hawaii. In the published photos, his son’s faces were again pixellated. “It’s a very hard thing to talk about. There’s an awful lot of people who think: ‘You work in films, what do you expect? Stop bitching and moaning about it.’ I’m maybe still blind to the fact that if I go to certain places this is going to happen and I have no right to get pissed off. I feel I do because I’m on holiday with my kids – leave me alone, leave them alone.

“We left the beach because we couldn’t play there because there were three guys sitting there taking photos of us. So they can pixellate all they want, but the truth of the matter is that these greaseballs are still there and we have to leave the beach and go and sit in a garden or a room or whatever.”

Law pours some water and looks cross. “But look, I really don’t want to talk about it. I’m so bored of myself going on about it. And I’m so aware it’s such an association with me. I know people are bored with it. I want to move on. I’ve got to make the decision where I’ve got to be a lot more private at times – and if I don’t like it.” At one point you considered leaving London for good? “Yeah, yeah. But I like living in London. I don’t want to surround my kids with security, don’t want to take my kids to private beaches on private holidays. But maybe I have to. Otherwise you’ll have to put up with me bitching and moaning endlessly.”

But Law has a problem today. He is giving an hour of his time to the media and thereby feeding what Peter Andre called the “insania”. “The predicament I’m in is that when you’re in a film like Side Effects which doesn’t have a big sales budget and is up against, as ever, the big, more commercial movies, the way to get it out there is to talk about it and that inevitably is going to feed your relationship with the media. So it’s a tricky situation.” Can I get a boo-hoo?

It is a predicament and not one all creative types have to endure. Later this month (11 March) we will hear Law on BBC4 narrating a film about the late, great Scottish sculptor William Turnbull, made by the artist’s son and Law’s friend, Alex Turnbull, who is best known as a member of post-punk funk band 23 Skidoo. “Bill made a contribution without having to have a relationship with the media. He dragged British art kicking and screaming into modernism after the war.” Indeed: Turnbull’s sculptures and paintings spoke for themselves, so Turnbull could remain silent. Law wishes he could be more like that. “In the end the work keeps you interesting and interested. It’s real, isn’t it? It’s a real contribution. That’s what Bill did. All the rest – there are those who choose to make the other stuff a part of their contribution. I personally don’t, but you get pulled into that stuff whether you want to or not.”

Surely, though, you never wanted to be obscure. Isn’t narcissistic display part of the allure of becoming an actor? “I wanted to be recognised as an actor, not for my looks or whatever.” And very quickly he was, though the looks probably didn’t harm his cause. Born in south-east London in 1973, Law joined the National Youth Music Theatre aged 12 and filmed his first TV series, Families, aged 17. In the early 90s the tyro thesp did a lot of theatre, with directors such as Katie Mitchell, Matthew Warchus and Sean Mathias in productions of Death of a Salesman, Les Parents Terribles and Indiscretion. And then, aged 23, two things happened: he became a father and his film career took off.

“I’d done 10 or 12 plays back to back. Suddenly this new medium offered itself and I was fortunate enough to work with some good people. Plus the money helped with a young family. It felt like an exciting time.” In quick succession he was Oscar Wilde’s lover opposite Stephen Fry, then a disabled former swimming star in Gattaca, then a hustler murdered by Kevin Spacey in Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Before he was 30 he had been Oscar-nominated twice – for his performances in The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain, both directed by Anthony Minghella. True, he did star in the last film I walked out on, Enemy at the Gates, in 2002, but let’s not spoil the story: by 2006 he was in the top 10 of bankable Hollywood stars.

“I never planned a career in film. I don’t know anyone who grew up in the 70s in Lewisham who did. It just wasn’t realistic. Theatre was. I grew up watching and loving film but it was this other world – movie stars were like Newman and Mitchum and McQueen. And then this amazing crop of actors – Tim Roth, Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis – came along. Tim and Gary were round the corner from where I lived. That was very, very, very influential for me. I remember seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in My Beautiful Launderette and thinking: ‘Oh, film can be part of my world as well.’”

By 2006, the London boy turned Hollywood A-lister had misgivings about his career. “I had to take a handle on what I was doing. I had to make a bit of money for the family [by then he was father to three children with ex-wife Sadie Frost] but I also had to think about how to please myself – and working in a play every year or every two years was an important step in that direction.” Why? “I’ll be honest. I feel – oh, I’m not going to give you that cliche that I feel more at home – but I feel more in control of the process in theatre and it’s more familiar to me.”

He returned to the stage in May 2009 as Hamlet. “I wanted to play him before I was 40. My feeling is always commit and do it. You don’t want to get to 50 and have not played Hamlet.” In the autumn we will see Law as Henry V, again directed by Michael Grandage. “I wanted to play Henry before I was 40 too, but I just missed it. He died when he was 37 so he has got to be played as a young king and I think I can get there with a little help from prosthetics. I’m joking.”

Law doesn’t yet do prosthetics. He does, though, bulk up. When he played Mat in the Donmar production of O’Neill’s Anna Christie he had shape-shifted: he was chunky, lavishly bearded and, most improbably, Irish. “I was playing this guy from the west coast of Ireland so the accent was really tricky and really thick. And I was eating a lot of weird food and exercising to bulk up. I remember halfway through rehearsals wondering ‘What am I doing? Am I in a pantomime? They’re going to kill me!’” Who – the critics? “Everyone! Me! I’m going to kill me for doing this.”

His performance opposite Ruth Wilson in Anna Christie in 2010 was critically feted. The Guardian’s Michael Billington wrote: “I suspect it’s a breakthrough performance in that it releases Law from the tyranny of always being seen as the good-looking lead man and allows him to become a character actor.” As if to prove that point, the following year we saw Law in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, as balding non-hottie Karenin who, in an emblematic scene, takes a silver case out of his bedside table containing his reusable condom for cheerless sex with his understandably adultery-hungry wife (Keira Knightley). Soon, too, we will see him as the eponymous Dom Hemingway in a Brit flick in which he plays a chubby hood in nasty synthetic shmutter and a heinous beard.

You were reported as saying that this was going to be your decade. “I would never say that! Jesus God no way! I said I was optimistic about my 40s. The roles should get more complex. I look back and I’m proud of the work I’ve done but not fulfilled by it. I feel in some areas I’ve only scratched the surface.” One itch he plans to scratch after Henry V is directing. His last time on the other side of the camera was in 1999 (on Tube Tales). Now Soderbergh has, reportedly, made his last film, perhaps you could take his place. “I wouldn’t presume! But I do want to direct and I’ve got a novel I’m developing.” There’s a tantalising possibility that he and Werner Herzog might work together. “He rang up and said, pretty much: ‘You, me, Borneo, piano, river, camera.’ And I’m like ‘Werner, I’m there.’” The money isn’t yet, though. Shame: I’d pay to watch Jude Law as a latter-day Klaus “Fitzcarraldo” Kinski going nuts in the tropics. Make it happen, Hollywood.

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Jude’s character in Side Effects believes that prescription pills are the answer to whatever ails you.

“I was intrigued by his absolute devotion and belief in medicine,” Jude told SheKnows at the press day for the movie in Los Angeles. “He’s someone who has worked very hard to get where he is, and to get as successful and effective as he is. It’s almost like a religion to him. He has a great faith in medicine being the answer. People that have that kind of faith are incredibly inspiring.”

In his own life though, Jude is turning to more holistic methods to improve his mood. The actor, who just turned 40 in December, told us he’s trying to expand his hobbies right now.

“An age with a zero on the end of it is always a good time to stop and address what you want to happen and what you want to do with yourself,” Jude told SheKnows. “I have certain ambitions — most of them have to do with making myself a wholer, happier person. Yoga is involved and evolving my hobbies a little bit more, doing stuff for myself.”

Eating right is clearly important to Jude, too, as he ordered a tuna Niçoise salad before the interview. And when SheKnows suggested he throw in the butternut squash soup, he was all over it as well!

CinemaBlend.com had the pleasure of sitting down with Jude to talk about taking on the project, what he believes the film has to say, and the importance of keeping a performance genuine.

When did you first get involved with this film, because I know that you worked with both Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns on Contagion before this.
I read it when I had just done Contagion just because Scott and I got on very well and he wanted me to read some of his stuff. And then Steven got involved and I ended up getting a call at the beginning of the year… no, it was over Christmas break, actually, and I got on-board.

Was it something that he mentioned while you were making Contagion or…
No, no, Steven wasn’t involved by that point. He got involved later. I read it and I knew it… but they tweaked it a little bit.

How did they change it?
Just little things about order. When you got to see about [Rooney Mara’s character]’s life – her past life with her husband and all that stuff. Subtle changes.

So not like an overhaul.
Scott had been working on it for a good eight, nine years – the idea of this project.

When you first started reading it, and I guess this applies to how you work in general, what is the element that you’re really honing into? Do you look specifically at the character you’d play or are you looking at the whole picture?
Hmmm….I don’t know. Obviously you want to look at the character and see what’s in it – and is there anything you feel you can or can’t do, or if it’s something you’ve done before or is out of your comfort zone or whatever. And I like the idea of always looking for something in that capacity – something different and challenging and that’s going to prick my curiosity. And then you’re also looking at the whole thing. Does it work? And who’s directing it? What will they bring to it? What is it saying? All of those things. And you get a sense of that pretty quick. For example, you can read something that’s good, but maybe, I don’t kno0w, mystifies – but then, “Oh, they’re directing it?” and you know, “Oh, they’ll bring this to it.” You know?

Which was the case with Side Effects?
I think it was a bit of both. I wanted to work with Steven again and I loved the project, I loved the script, I loved the part! So it was a pretty easy decision.

Part of what makes this such an interesting character is the balance between his strength and weakness. He’s a guy who is not only living behind the 8 ball, but it seems like someone keeps putting him there. But he’s also a fighter and doesn’t just concede to the situation. Can you talk about your approach to balancing those sides of the character?
Well, an awful lot of that journey is in the writing. And as long as you make an attempt to bring realism and commitment to a part. We were very clear about letting his…I remember kind of grading it, as it were, and I wanted his breakdowns to be quite extreme. I wanted it to be clear that he was losing it. And I liked the idea also, and I think we discussed this on set, that one moment the audience can start to think, “Hang on, is he going mad?” That’s right around the time he goes to the other doctor and he asks for drugs and you think, “He’s losing it.” And I liked that because it plays along with the twist even more. “Oh it’s him – he’s the nut!”

Would you ever kind of exaggerate your performance to perhaps make your character look a bit more shady?
No, I’m always quite genuine with honesty of the journey. I think in this case it was so cleverly interwoven that I wasn’t manipulating. He wasn’t being manipulating and I didn’t need to manipulate him, you see what I mean? I think it works and his real reaction was going to be enough within the dynamic of the plot.

You mentioned the fact that he goes to the doctor to get pills. He clearly self-medicates in addition to the fact that he prescribes medications at the drop of a hat. I’m curious about what you think about that aspect of his character, as a user, and what you think this movie has to say about our culture where prescription medications are everywhere?
Something that I learned very quickly, and I have a lot of respect for too – it’s an area where you have to become mindful, cautious – is that psychiatrists have complete faith in their medicine. They’re committed to it. It’s their world.

Would you call it a faith?
Yeah! I was going to say faith! Because I think you’re right. It’s a commitment to it. It’s an understanding. They can tweak it and hone, and of course they have to believe in it because it’s what they preach. It’s what they give. So the idea that they would self-medicate makes absolute sense. We heard stories of that happening from our consultant, who was on set every day, who worked with Scott in the writing of it, Sasha Bardey. Who is around today, actually. He’s a really interesting man and a very successful psychiatrist. A lot of the stories and ideas came from his experiences that Scott kind of weaned out.

And in a way, in that answer is how I feel about pharmaceuticals in general. On the one hand they are remarkable things and I saw some really moving situations with some really sick people who had obviously had their lives turned around and given an opportunity to live a normal life. And equally you see other people or you hear stories about people who are just in a terrible state because they are using it as a shortcut and don’t necessarily need it. And it starts that cycle of thinking, “Oh, I’ll do it just once.” “Oh, that was good, I didn’t get that anxious.” Or, “Oh, I really slept better.” And suddenly you pop them and there’s always a price. So what this film does that I think is really clever is that it offers that on a very level playing field. It’s not preaching. It’s suggesting the conversation that should be had. And I liked that. I liked that it has a generosity – it shows it as it is.

“Side Effects” came his way after getting along well with Scott Burns on “Contagion.”
“I read it just after ‘Contagion’ because I got along well with Scott. He had it and had been working on it for a long time,” Law said. “At that stage, Steven wasn’t involved. And then, I got one of those very fortunate phone calls. Steven wanted it to be his next film, and when someone like him asks you, you go do it because you know it’s going to be intelligent, smart, it’ll look good [and] it’s a pleasure to make. The fact that it’s also a really interesting piece of work, an interesting character, it’s a very easy decision.”

Having been exposed to Soderbergh’s on-set working style (usually acting as his own DP), Law was prepared for the easy-going process.
“…he makes it very easy. He makes really important decisions, but kind of simply. Little things like really going to the locations, the real place, immediately you’ve got an authenticity, that you don’t have to recreate—you’re in it, you’re being genuine,” Law explained about Soderbergh’s style.

And Law reveals there are advantages of having a director act as a cinematographer as well.
“I love the focus you get from having a director behind the camera, because suddenly all the energy on the set is focused on what is by the lens, which is where it should be. And, he gives you great freedom to do as you wish, you kind of figure out the physicality of the scene. What’s extraordinary is that he then sits there watching, and will make very quick decisions about how to tell the story now in three or four shots. You sort of can’t believe it’s as easy as it is,” he enthused. “That kind of calm confidence gives you great that you’re the right person for the job, and that’s a nice feeling. Not a lot of questioning. I remembered the pace he goes at from ‘Contagion,’ and so I did a lot of my necessary preparation before. I had done all that, asked all my questions, got it all in order and I could just keep up with it. It was very pleasurable. I love New York, so it was an excuse to live there, and my family came over.”

As for the subject of Soderbergh’s retirement, Law is still holding out hope we’ll see him behind the camera again someday.
“It’s something that he wants to do. I certainly know that he’s capable and talented at so many other things in which he wants to delve, I think he’s doing painting and photography. And I can understand why he might feel the need to say, ‘That’s it,’ in order to make that commitment. But, I can’t really believe he won’t return,” Law shared.

Law carefully laid out the stages of the ethical struggles Dr. Jonathan Banks ethical dilemma faces in the film.
“I kind of graded him throughout. There was the comfortable—you could almost argue a little bit smug—‘perfect life’ at the beginning, and then the deterioration, the revelation, and then of course him trying to put it back together and seek some kind of redemption or revenge, even. All of that really, the twists and turns were in the script, so sometimes you just have to stick to playing it for real and bring commitment,” he said the journey his character undergoes.

“There was an interesting element that we did talk about, that we wanted to feel at moments, ‘Who was the mad person?’ We liked going there with him. Also, what I really admire in psychiatry, in some of the work I did prior to the film, was their ability to diagnose, to pick riddles,” he continued. “That’s something that he’s obviously good at. It’s demonstrated the first time you see him when he’s with the Haitian boy. He’s good at assessing and here’s something he can’t work out.“

The opportunity to act opposite cast members such as Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones was part of the appeal of this role.
Law said the rest of the cast was, “one of the reasons you get involved in a project like this if it comes your way, because it’s well written, you’ve got great scenes to flesh stuff out, I’m pretty sure that’s when actors are happiest.”

He said about the Soderbergh’s casting process that “he’s terribly good at putting his casts together, and so you just have to make sure you’re organic. Rooney I was really impressed with. I really enjoyed watching her work; I really felt that she had a quality of inner silence. She’s not an actress that comes forward and demands attention. A kind of subtlety— it’s very seductive and powerful.”

Having worked with many of the world’s greatest directors — Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, the late Anthony Minghella — Law still has a few he’d like to work with.
Specifically, he “would like to work with Paul Thomas Anderson, I like his films very much. I would like to work with the Coen Brothers. I would go back to work with a lot of them, I’ve been very fortunate in working with, not just incredibly talented directors, but the talented ones tend to be the nice ones, I don’t know why but that just tends to be it. It’s got something to do with collaboration, I don’t know… I’m very lucky.”

Law’s strategy in choosing roles is quite simple.
“[I'm] just enjoying the challenges, I’m trying to keep people guessing, do different things, and discover areas I haven’t explored before,” the actor said. “It keeps it very alive; it keeps it very fresh. I’m still quite curious, I want to try all those things out.”