Film is a medium of light. Brad Anderson’s films are anything but. He’s followed up the bleak thrillers Session 9 and The Machinist, with the nihilistic Transsiberian all but erasing the memories of his earlier romantic whimsies Next Stop Wonderland and Happy Accidents. (Also see our interview with Transsiberian's Emily Mortimer.) Session 9 may be known for resurrecting David Caruso’s career, and The Machinist for Christian Bale exposing his ribcage, but both films put the psycho in psychological, and proved Anderson a master of his craft.

It's an odd feeling, to sit down with someone, just hours after you've seen them play a film character so different from their real-life persona. But that's what happened when Emily Mortimer walked into a room at the Essex House in Manhattan, to talk about her role in the upcoming thriller Transsiberian. The night before, I was watching her as Jessie, a reformed party animal who, with her harmless, down-home husband Roy (Woody Harrelson), crosses the unforgiving terrain of Northern Russia on one of the last of the great railroads, the Transsiberian. Before you know it, she's covering up a murder, flushing heroin down a toilet, and dangling off the back of a speeding train. A day later, here she sits before me, American accent replaced by a British one, munching on a brownie and fiddling with a pen.