‘When I couldn’t do the spitting scene, Sean took me aside and said: “Ron, if you don’t actually spit in my face, we’ll be here all day.” So I let one fly – and kept having to redo it’

I read an article about a curious book that had great reviews in Italy, a murder mystery about monks in the middle ages fighting for the fictional missing part of Aristotle’s Poetics. I said: “This is for me.” Since childhood, I had been fascinated with medieval and religious architecture, and Aristotle’s Poetics is my favourite literary work.