Beaten to the punch by last year's Capote, which saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman win an Academy Award for Best Actor, the film showed that there is more mileage in Truman Capote to make another very fine but very different film.

Why did you choose to do the story of Truman Capote?

Douglas McGrath: As a writer/director you always look for someone who is interesting, complex, contradictory so it's kind of simple. [Truman Capote] was the most fascinating, funny, tragic, character I can think of, so I was naturally drawn to him.

How does it compare to the other Capote film?

DM: I haven't seen the other film but based on what I know and what I have read I think our film is much funnier, we took a more earnest approach to it.

Last year Phillip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for his portrayal as Capote. Are you expecting anything for Infamous.

DM: Every year when I watch the Oscars I always say "that's the person who should win" and they never win. I have no gift for understanding how they award these awards so I can only say that that young man down the line [Toby Jones] deserves every award they thought of including the Nobel peace prize and whatever you win if you're a really good boy scout. He deserves everything because he's giving a performance that he aches for. That's what I believe in my heart.

You have put together a great ensemble cast [Sigourney Weaver, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Daniel Craig]. Any reason for your choice of cast?

DM: Some famous director said that 90% of the director's job is casting the parts well so I think about that right from the beginning in the utmost depths and we waited a year to cast the part of Truman because no one was quite right. There were a lot of people who were fine and a lot of people were very fine but no one was perfect, but I made a mistake once, and unfortunately I can not tell you who it was, when casting the part and I thought I can't ever do that again and I made sure I didn't.  When I look at the movie now I think everyone was perfectly cast.

What was it like working with such established actresses as Sigourney Weaver, Sandra Bullock and Gwyneth Paltrow?

Toby Jones: It's an extraordinary thing to play a part where you have so many well established leading ladies and in a way it was kind of fantastic because they have so much experience and they are incredibly respectful of the job I had to do so that I never felt intimidated as such because I had Truman in the way and I had to actually become him in a way.

Did you know much about Truman?

TJ: Not much before I got the part.

Did you manage to watch Capote last year?

TJ: They had only just finished when we started filming. I was incredibly pleased that there was so much material to look at. He had appeared on so many chat shows and there were so many books about him that I could never stop learning about him and that was fascinating because he's such a rich complex character.

Did reading his books form a major part of your research?

TJ: The thing with Capote is that when you see his footage. He is so extraordinary, his voice, and that was the main thing trying to understand how anyone could sound so strange. The worry for me was that I would feel too strange for an audience to see .. people said no you forget about how extraordinary he sounds, you get used to it.