Put Valentine's Day and the January sales in a cocktail shaker and you might get an idea of the atmosphere at the Odeon West End tonight. Sadly, the stampede wasn't towards Empire, but Mexican hot-stuff Gael Garcia Bernal, at the screening for The King.
Leading the way on the red carpet were the film's screenwriter, Milo Addica, and director, James Marsh, still joined at the hip after months holed up in spooky-sounding Corpus Christi, Texas.
"This sort of thing can't be created by email, we needed personal contact," explained Addica. "We'd get into some serious fights at the end of the day - especially when the Ashes were on. I come from an acting background so would often improv and that would put me into a very heated, angry, vicious state and James would often be the victim." "Method acting," chips in Marsh, dryly.
Gael Garcia Bernal, sadly a good foot shorter than Empire and thus unstealable, enjoyed getting his teeth into a violent role. "It’s one of the reasons everyone does movies, to get a glimpse into the mystery of the human condition. You relate it to your own experience, own journey. It was a challenge to do it in English and to work with an accent; I’m always reluctant to say it was a United States accent because that doesn’t really exist, people speak in so many different ways!" When asked how to describe the accent, a po-faced: "It's, you know, a mix between blue..." And laughing, walks off into the cinema.
Later on, more fans were screaming - and not just the young ones either. This time it was for heavyweight Daniel Auteuil, whose gripping French thriller Hidden was being screened. "I feel like a fish and the water (sic)," he said on being in London, before reverting to French. On the film: "He's not a very sympathetic or friendly character, but it needed someone, this character, to do something about explaining the guilt of France at this moment in time, so I did it. Anyway, I think I made him more sympathetic!"