His bold post-Twilight choices, he insists, weren’t so bold, after all: attempting to trek to the top of the Hollywood A-list would have been “much more dangerous” than going down the independent road. “You can see quite a lot of examples of it not really working out for people,” he says, naming no names, “so I just thought it would be a silly idea to try to do a massive action movie or something.” He was also aware that his stratospheric celebrity status might plummet down to Earth at any moment. “I always think that whatever movie you’re doing, there’s a potential that it’s the last movie you’re ever going to get, and so I don’t want to end my career on a ‘transitional’ movie.”

An arthouse power-player

Instead, he has devoted himself to the kind of challenging films he likes to see himself. “When I first started getting into film, the movies that I’d be buying DVDs of would be slightly obscure things from Cannes or whatever. And I just think... I don’t want to feel like someone’s trying to entertain me. It’s like if you go to a party and there’s someone there who’s just trying to entertain everybody. You might have a chuckle at them, but you know they’re really just a throwaway, pointless person with no depth.” He smiles at how cruel this sounds – and carries on, anyway. “But if someone’s very much themselves and has an intriguing, independent point of view, then they are an interesting person to converse with. I just look at movies the same way.”