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On the violence of The Killer Inside Me, and empathy: “I was shocked too. But I don’t like watching myself on the big screen at the best of times. I hardly recognised myself in this one. I’d gained a little weigh. I wasn’t working out… because right before then I had been working out a lot and had become super muscular, which I didn’t like either. It wouldn’t have been right for that part, I wanted to look plainer. Not glamorous. Small town. There is something kind of masochistic about her. She wasn’t easy to empathise with.” Empathy is one of Hudson’s favourite words. And something she reckons she is good at, as I discover when I ask if she is ‘an empath’? “Empath? That’s a proper word? Someone who can empathise?’ I nod. ‘I love that! As I entered my thirties I realised I was an empath. A noun.”

On her death scene in The Killer Inside Me: “Yes, but you prepare for a movie like this in the same way you would any movie. I’ve never seen anyone die but I did nearly choke to death once, when I was 12, on a fireball that blocked my windpipe. And there was another time when I was winded after falling off a horse. You know, struggling for breath. So I tried to draw on those experiences to make my death scene look convincing.”

On being spanked by Casey Affleck for the film: “Ha! There were a couple in there when I thought: God, Casey! He got a bit of power behind it. It was definitely real. I think it depends on your sense of humour where you draw your boundaries. After about the 20th spank we all started to laugh because you become quite comfortable with the idea and it becomes about the technical side of things. I’ve known Casey for so long that you can’t help but laugh every now and then.”

On body image: “I’m pretty comfortable with my body. I’m imperfect. The imperfections are there. People are going to see them, but I take the view you only live once and, hey, I’m getting spanked today! And I’m working with Michael Winterbottom, who is an amazing director. Not sure, but the older I get the more I am OK with it. When I was younger I felt I had to apologise for being so happy, for not seeing things in a negative way.”

On letting her son see some films: “I normally take him on the set with me, but not for that one. ‘Mummy is going to be naked on the bed, smoking and getting spanked in the next scene, honey!’ I guess it will be weird for him when he does eventually watch it. I had to watch my dad die in films. I was 13 when I saw Backdraft and I was bawling.”

What her mom and step dad taught her about sex: “My brothers might feel differently about it but, for me, I felt my parents laid it out for us pretty well. We always had a good perspective about sex. When you grow up with parents in showbiz who are loud and funny and the life of the party, you get pretty relaxed about that stuff.”

On the cries of nepotism: “Well, for a while I felt I had to apologise for it, at the beginning of my career. I didn’t want to talk about it. Cameron Crowe [the director of her first film] was asked by the press if he knew my parents when he cast me. He said: “So what, it’s like Goldie and Kurt turned up demanding I cast their daughter? It doesn’t work like that.”’

On dating other actors: “I think when you have one person in a relationship who is an actor and the other isn’t that can be difficult, because the one who isn’t wonders whether the one who is, is acting. But when you have two people who are actors that doesn’t happen so much because they both understand about creative space. You know where it begins and ends. You know acting is not normality, that you have to be a little dysfunctional to be an actor. You know you could be laughing one minute and then crying the next, because a director has asked you to cry. That’s not normal behaviour.”

On the paparazzi and media focus on her personal life: “I can disappear, though. There is a way not to draw attention to yourself. If I want to draw attention to myself, put on heels and a tight dress and do my hair up, then I can. But I can also tone it down. For me I’d go crazy if I couldn’t go out and walk in the streets. I learnt some of that from my mum. She is so recognisable. She’s just so Goldie! When I was a girl I would get embarrassed and say: “Mum, put a hat on or something.” I hate it [when the paparazzi stalk me]. It’s so invasive. I went through a phase where it really affected me. You know, there might be a picture of you with your butt hanging out of your dress and you think what has that got to do with my work? But it’s not just the long lens, it’s what they say to you up close, the most horrible things, in front of my son. There have been days when I have been in three different tabloids, writing about me being in three different relationships, with people I haven’t even met. It’s that bad!”

I'm reading: Kate Hudson: Casey Affleck is a rough spanker