Most actors only get a script that’s been green-lit and ready to go; it’s a different universe from the reality of putting a film together and raising money for it. It’s a very, very difficult thing to do.

There aren’t a lot of people who are consistently making films, and it’s difficult for them to know what to aim for. There aren’t many subsidies around and it’s not a financial environment where people want to invest in the more esoteric films. There isn’t the hunger there from up high.  

What’s heartbreaking is that it’s so hard to raise money for a film and now, far more than before, you have to make a film that’s smack in the middle of the genre, and it had better star people that audiences want to buy tickets to see.

There’s a slice of people working in the British film industry who are not making a slate of films and don’t have huge financing. Each project is a one-off thing and can make or break them. They can appear and disappear, scurrying around Soho with their satchels one day and not the next.

But despite all the problems, there is a continual drive for people to tell stories in this country. I know producers in Los Angeles and the reason they’re doing it is to make a killing. They’re looking to be producers and they want to be in that business because they know somewhere there’s a pot of gold, and then they can buy a house with the walls so high no one will ever be able to see them.

That’s just not what drives anyone in England. At every level, people here just want to be in the storytelling business. What drives people is the doing of it, the making of it, the challenge and the reward of it. It is storytelling for storytelling’s sake, and that’s incredibly heartening.

There seems to be a never-ending supply of people who are willing to throw themselves at it. They just want to be part of this world. They look at the very best of what we make – and we do make some fabulous films – and they go, “Yeah, that is for me. I’m prepared to put up with whatever indignity is hurled at me because at the end, it’s worth something; I want to tell a story on a big screen in a dark room.”

Jason Isaacs was talking to Tom Seymour.

Case Histories is currently showing on BBC One.