Guillermo del Toro has revealed Richard Ayoade helped Sally Hawkins land her role in this year's Oscars front runner The Shape of Water.

The British actress plays mute Elisa in the unconventional love story between a cleaner and a merman. In fact, her performance was so convincing, she scored BAFTA and Oscar nominations.

Director Del Toro has also received many awards nominations, winning the BAFTA for best Director earlier this month and leading the pack in the run-up to the Oscars next weekend.

And, in a recent interview, he revealed it was seeing Hawkins in a supporting role in Richard Ayoade's 2010 British film Submarine that swayed him to cast her as The Shape of Water's lead.

Incredible.

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"Then I saw her in Richard Ayoade's Submarine, where she's a secondary character," Del Toro told White Little Lies.

"The way I cast actors is not through the way he or she delivers lines, it's the way he or she listens to the lines being spoken by others. Or by the way they look at the other actor."

Stefanie Keenan / Contributor Getty Images

[Guillermo del Toro]

He added: "I just thought, this is it. If I create a great creature and she looks at it like a man in a rubber suit, the film dies.

"If she looks at it like a creature, it lives. She had such a massive crush on the creature. For real. Sally, not the character."

Thank YOU Richard Ayoade.

The Shape of Water is in cinemas now.

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