So how did you find yourself in the film? What was it about you that made you the perfect Spunkmeyer?

Mike Myers was fired from Second City in Toronto and he was sleeping on my couch in London, and we were playing football in the park, and I broke my leg. And I had a cast on and got this call for Aliens. I was still in my drama school headspace, thinking I didn’t want to do some bullshit movie about space. I knew the first one was movie history. The first half of the first one is brilliant: real people in a garbage truck in space, and the face hugger and the alien coming out of the chest… And then I thought the second half was just a chase movie really.

I remember there’s a part where Harry Dean Stanton is looking around and there’s a loud noise and I jumped out of my seat, and it’s just the cat. C’mon! I just thought that was manipulative; it’s just a cheap shot. So I read Aliens, and thought that of course I’d do it, but I thought it was just another chase movie. I thought it was just an action movie, but it went a hell of a lot further than I expected, and the characters were better than I expected, to be honest. It impressed me.

I was really confident then. I’ve lost all that now, by the way. So I went in on my crutches, in this really space-age long jacket. I met Al Matthews [Sgt. Apone], and he was a really scary guy and he’d been in Vietnam. I thought, “There’s no way I’m talking to any of these people.” He was living in England because he hated America. All that stuff he did was all improvised. Anyway I went in on these crutches in this coat, for Hudson’s role, and I said to these two assistants, “Guys, tell whoever wrote this to re-write it – I think it’s silly.” And then I got a re-call and went back, and realised that the two assistants I was pushing around were James Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd! And Cameron said he really liked my coat, so I told him if he gave me the part, it was his. So, when he gave me the part I gave him the coat.

Did you and the other actors bond as a real unit?