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YOUR PHONE RINGS IT'S YOUR AGENT WORD IS THEY THINK you're perfect for one of literature (and füm)'s most reprehensible souls. Happy? "Delighted," beams Sam Riley, taking pause from a hectic foot-chase on the streets of Brighton (although the film will principally shoot in the less modernised Eastbourne). "I was thrilled. It's an iconic character. There aren't many roles this good. Then you start panicking - how the fuck are you going to do it?"

Pinkie, that malevolent youth who runs amok in Graham Greene's pre- War resort, is now a quasi-Mod of 1964 (the book was set in the 1930s, the Richard Atten borough-starring classic in 1947), care of director Rowan Joffe's careful reworking, but Riley is determined they are being faithful to the novel's tormented protagonist. "I love the Attenborough movie, but there was so much they couldn't show at the time," he says, just before being called back to repeatedly hotfoot it up a sea front stairway, a gang of hoodlums on his skirts. "There's more of Greene's violence, more religious confusion, and the sexual anxiety is more prominent in our Pinkie." And, Riley feels, it's not all black and white.

"You've always got to root for your characters even if they are bastards," he laughs, his pretty face neatly scarred. "You have to find something in it. He's not had a lot of love in his life." Even so, there's no escaping the "horrible" nature of what he's scheming. To cover up a murder. Pinkie wins over and marries deluded innocent and potential witness Rose (Andrea Riseborough). She thinks it's love. Riley nods in agreement. "A pretty twisted kind of love," he giggles.

Brighton Rock is out on February 4.

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