Q: Did you go around with private investigators? What did you do to delve into the role?

Casey Affleck: I didn’t go around with private investigators so much because it turns out private investigators don’t really go around all that much. They spend a lot of time… It’s not so glamorous as it is depicted in movies and that sort of stuff. It’s kind of like they spend a lot of time sitting at their desks, very smart people I talked to, but it’s a hustle. It’s a hard job, long hours, and they kind of sit at a desk and gather information and try to track people down through their records and through this and through that and deliver that information to somebody else and it’s all done on the internet. There’s not a lot of smoking in the shadows or tailing people in cars. That discovery sort of led us to want to depict the private investigators in this movie in that sort of more mundane kind of work-a-day way that you don’t often see which is why when they come to find…you know, when you meet these characters in this movie, they don’t seem like Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown.” You know what I mean? They seem like these people that sit around their house. They’ve got their CD rack and they watch movies and they go to work and they don’t do anything that special. And this case, when it falls into their lap, is like a really big deal, very foreign to them. They don’t really know how to handle it, how to go about it, or even to take the job because they don’t feel qualified.

Q: Does your character have more of a history in the novel?

Casey Affleck: Well yeah, there’s a lot more information about him and his history in the novel. The movie changed quite a bit from the book. The relationship between the girl changed, what his history is as an investigator has changed. The movie wanted to introduce him sort of at the beginning of his career which I think was a good choice, instead of someone who had been around forever and was weathered and seasoned because that’s someone who has already discovered the kind of moral grey areas in life. You know what I mean? It wouldn’t have been as interesting at the end of the movie if he was someone who had been through this and been broken and put back together a million times, who’d been through divorce, seen people killed. I think that was a really good decision that they made. But yes, in the book he definitely has a history. Did you like the movie?

Q: A lot.

Casey Affleck: You did?

[A chorus of yeses from everyone]

Q: Did you have much involvement with Ben when he was writing it?

Casey Affleck: A little bit. He worked with Aaron Stockard who wrote it with him, but I came onto it, I was doing “Jesse James.” He came up and gave me the script and asked me if I wanted to do it and then it was about 6 months later that we started shooting. So it was over the next 6 months there was a fair bit of back and forth. The thing about Ben is that he is really comfortable. I don’t think he felt insecure. So he was totally comfortable saying, “What do you think of this?” or hearing or taking my ideas and putting them in the script. There’s a lot of people that might go or feel sort of territorial or like “Man, if I take this guy’s idea and put it in the script, or if he doesn’t like my idea that I suggest to him, what does that say about me as a director or writer?” You know, he’s won an Oscar. He’s had a lot of success. He’s sort of a confident person. I think that that enables him to be as collaborative as he was which was great.

Q: Can you talk about the similarities between your character Robert Ford and your character in this film? They’re both guys that other men pick on and tell them they can’t do that. What appeals to you about that kind of character?

Casey Affleck: Well, I don’t know what appeals to me about it. There are definitely some similarities. I mean there’s one small similarity I guess between Robert Ford and the character in “Gone Baby Gone” which is just that people don’t take them seriously or think that they’re capable of what the character thinks that he’s capable of. Other than that, the character in these two movies couldn’t possibly be any more different. As far as why it appealed to me, it wasn’t that quality necessarily that appealed to me about the characters but it was sort of other things about both. I guess there was a little bit of overlap there.

Q: No, they’re so different. I didn’t mean…

Casey Affleck: No, I know what you mean. There is definitely that. It’s a good question but I don’t really have a good answer. I’m not really sure why because I think that the answer is that it wasn’t that quality that appealed to me about the characters. You know what I mean?

Q: What did you think about the delay in England with the release of this film due to the Madeline McCann disappearance? Also, was there any particular high profile missing child case that was going on at the time when you were filming this movie?

Casey Affleck: I wasn’t aware of any case in the couple months that we were shooting this that had been going on, but certainly there’s always something. There’s always some kind of kidnapped child media sensation thing or whatever. I’m not sure why they pick the ones that they pick but it’s usually because they’re white or because they come from a neighborhood where you wouldn’t expect kids to be taken or whatever. There are a lot of kids that get kidnapped all the time that don’t get that kind of media attention. I can’t really say why those ones get chosen without sounding horribly cynical. Obviously we did this movie well before the Madeline thing. It’s a sad story, a sad case. It’s horrible, kind of a parent’s worst nightmare, and I hate to even think about it really. I don’t know that much about the details. It was kind of a bigger thing in Europe. It’s just reaching the States now. I don’t know all that much about it. I’m glad that they delayed the release of the movie because I think it was the right thing to do. It was the least that anyone could do. It’s just a movie after all and if it’s going to interfere in any way, or hurt the parents in any way or anything, there’s no question. Just move the movie.

Q: What do you have coming up?

Casey Affleck: Nothing. I don’t know. I’m sort of doing this stuff for a while. These movies are both going to roll out a little bit.

Q: What about “Aardvark”?

Casey Affleck: I’ve got “Aardvark” to get back to which is pretty exciting actually. I’ve never done a thing like that. That’s exactly what I’m working on from now until Christmas, probably I’ll be doing that. I don’t know. It’s just the holidays and nothing is going to come down the pike yet.

Q: It’s definitely your season so I’m sure something else is going to come along soon.

Casey Affleck: Well thanks.

Q: Congratulations on both films.

Casey Affleck: Thank you very much.

Q: It’s a great performance. I think you’ll definitely be nominated. Is that anything that occurs to you when you do a film?

Casey Affleck: Not really. Not really but I can’t tell you how nice it is that people responded to both movies. I’ve been on the other side of things and been at tables like this that haven’t been so warm so it’s very nice. [Laughter]