According to Matthew Goode, Burning Man is the best film that he has ever been involved with.

That means a lot, firstly because the 33-year-old English actor has appeared in Woody Allen’s Match Point and Tom Ford’s A Single Man (where he played opposite Colin Firth); and secondly because he has been known to be very frank about his projects.

Last year, he explained to a British newspaper about how he finds himself in situations where he’s “embarrassed about having to talk about a film which I don’t think is that brilliant.” Luckily, this isn’t the case with Jonathan Teplitzky’s raw and moving movie about a father dealing with love and loss.

“The main thing I took away from the film is trusting myself with harder material and challenging myself to do something that is scary and feeling like I did a good job,” Goode says, then adds with mock machismo, “without getting cocky.”

Goode spoke to Melissa Leong from Nashville, where he is filming Park Chan-Wook’s new thriller alongside Nicole Kidman.

QHow did you get involved with this film?
Q I had been filming Leap Year with Anand Tucker and he produced a film with Andy Paterson whose great friend from film school is [director] Jonathan Teplitzky. Anand recommended me. I read the script and I thought, “Crikey this could be a bit of a challenge.” Particularly after page one, I was like, “Really? What the hell is this? I’m masturbating over a hooker?”

Q Can you elaborate, not on the hooker part, but on what you found the most challenging about the role?
A When I read the script, I thought, ‘This guy is very dark and you don’t particularly like him.’ On the surface, it would seem like he’s having affairs and behaving extremely badly and erratically. Then obviously when you realize what’s going on, you feel for him immensely. There’s a huge emotional arc through the film and there’s a lot of sadness involved. I saw that as a real challenge to play, without it becoming too one note.

QHow did you prepare for the film’s intensely emotional scenes?
A It would have been parasitic of me to go and sit in hospitals and talk to families who are afflicted with this kind of thing. I spoke to Jonathan [who had been through something similar] at length. That was a worry of mine. The last thing I wanted was Jonathan coming up to me and going, “That’s not how it was mate. You got it completely wrong.”

QWhat do you think audiences will take away from seeing it?
A For me, I’ve only seen it once and I was as affected as when I was making the film. There’s a huge love story, really. It’s something that is very real and raw put on the screen. When someone’s suffering from something you forget that the people around him have to go on with every day.

QWhat were your most memorable days on set in Australia?
A Oh good god, masturbating over a hooker was one. [Laughs.] There was one point where we had been filming it for a few hours. I remember in the middle of a take, the wonderful voice of our director going: “It’s not that big, mate.” Thanks! Sorry if I was over doing the hand actions.

Source: Ampersande