Diane Lane is a remarkable 36. It seems that the older she gets, the more alluring she becomes. "I would hope that'd be the case, otherwise, you know, you'd just jump off a bridge at 35, right?" she jokes. 

“I’ve never been in this position before. It feels slightly surreal. I feel very exposed. I know one day I’ll look back at this period and be able to go, ‘Weeeee!’ “ Nicole Kidman laughs out loud. “This has been a big year for me!”

With the highly public divorce from Tom Cruise this year may have been rocky on the private side, but the tenacious actress has also been able to venture deep into her work, which is why she is enjoying (or not) a frenetic promotional schedule for Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrmann’ s stylised musical romance set in 1890’s Paris.

It's often said that if you want to write for film you should start by writing a book. As much as 75% of all films made are adapted from books. You don't need to look far to see actual proof of this statistic: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the James Bond series, The Godfather, to name a few.

Prior to our interview in a Los Angeles hotel room, Sir Ian McKellen had been interviewed by the religious press and seemed a bit exasperated when they suggested that his Gandalf in Lord of the Rings was akin to being a Messianic saviour.

"Well I certainly wasn't the Saviour. What I liked about Hobbits was that it was the perfect community but it didn't have a church. There is no God in Lord of the Rings, no Pope, no bishop, no credo, or no one telling you what to do."

McKellen dismisses any religious undertones of the character, pure and simple.

LOS ANGELES. Peter Jackson was in an upbeat mood as he began his marathon round of interviews promoting the final, long-awaited chapter in his epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sporting his trademark purple t-shirt, khaki shorts, Jackson doesn't quite know whether or not he is really glad that his dream project is at end.

LOS ANGELES. Liv Tyler is a luminous presence, but try talking wedding ring, as opposed to Tolkien's Ring, and Ms Tyler clams up. Tyler married 30-year-old Royston Langdon, the Leeds-born lead singer of Spacehog, in March.

"You really like those personal questions, don't you", she poses with a sweet smile to hide her disdain. But then she begrudgingly responds: "I'm very happy, thank you for asking."

Tyler was more interested in talking about the final phase of Lord of the Rings, the much anticipated Return of the King.

Peter Jackson was in an upbeat mood as he began his marathon round of interviews promoting the final, long-awaited chapter in his epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sporting his trademark purple t-shirt, khaki shorts, Jackson doesn’t quite know whether or not he is really glad that his dream project is at end.

I remember the first time I used a computer to edit a video. It was early 1996, a year before the release of RealVideo 1.0.

I was making a short documentary, but I didn't have a capture card on my own computer. This was before everyone was using DV, where you simply pipe the footage down a wire from cam to computer.

So I travelled an hour by bus from my house in Edinburgh to a friend's home to use his new-fangled video capture card. John, a cameraman who worked for Reuters, had made the leap in the dark and forked out 800 quid for one.

Ewan McGregor clearly despises the whole press junket process, and was not in the mood for jocularity when promoting his latest film, Big Fish, a comic fantasy about a unique father-son relationship.

Known to millions of movie-goers as the younger Obi-Wan in the latest Star Wars trilogy, McGregor reacts almost defensively when asked if he is surprised how successful he has become, given his more self-effacing origins on the silver screen in the likes of Shallow Grave, Blue Juice and even the raw Trainspotting.

In his latest film, Something's Gotta Give, Oscar winning legend Jack Nicholson plays an aging playboy attracted to younger women and scared of serious commitment. So it's not surprising that the veteran star had a major hand in developing his character. After all, as he admits with a lascivious grin in between puffs of a cigarette in a New York hotel room, he knows men like those only too well.