- For the first time you collaborated with Nikita Mikhalkov 17 years ago. Did that experience make your participation in the shooting of "The Barber Of Siberia" ["BS"] easier?
- Between "Kinfolk" (1981) and "Burnt by the Sun" (1994) Nikita and I tried again to find a new mutual project. Unfortunately for a long time we were unable to make our mutual ideas come true due to different reasons. Now taking into account the perfect cooperation in "BS" I find this fact twice as regrettable. Nikita and I are so associated that he needn't explain me either the scene or how to play it.

- Mikhalkov describes the cadet Andrey Tolstoy as the man "who understands neither what is happening to him nor what the love is". How did you prepare for this role?
- Tolstoy is a character much corresponding to the real life of young men of his time. He escapes his social origin by studying in a military school and then going to the army. He becomes an officer, marries, founds a family. For any other young man of his origin it would have been a nice career. But everyday life offers little drama for a feature film. So this character is turned upside-down by the love to a woman from another culture . Jane wakes in him a passion one can hardly see in films - needless to say about the normal life. This love changes his life in geographical, professional and any other sense completely. The moment he rises against his superior, the general, is just one example for many.

- What was the main difficulty for you during the shooting of "BS"?
- The fact I played a man who was in his early 20s, much younger than me. The task made me vulnerable. Mikhalkov cast much younger actors for the roles of the other cadets - all of them between 20 and 22. Simply because of their appearance they met their roles much better. But he took a good care of me and did everything so that I could feel comfortable among others. But still I felt the strain everyday during the film shooting.

- Did you learn anything from the cooperation with your international colleagues Julia Ormond and Richard Harris?
- I don't think the American, Russian or British school of acting differ much from one another. It's more a question of the personality than the school or methods of acting. One actor differs from another in a completely specific way. I can't find words to express in details what I learned from my cooperation with Julia or Richard . With each new film my first rule is to try to understand my partners. Or even more: to learn something from them. So that I could enrich my own life and experience. From this point of view I probably learned much.

- According to your experience, are there any differences between western and eastern filmmakers?
- I don't think, the differences between Russians and Western matter too much in the film making. Everyone makes films in his own way. And "BS" is above all significant precisely in what concerns Nikita's method. Whether in Paris or Moscow or anywhere else in the world - Nikita has his own style and makes films in his completely personal way.

- French script writer Jacqueline Gamard said that while working with Mikhalkov one could think that he was somehow living in "Mikhalkovia". What is your opinion about that?
- It's absolutely true. Nikita is very special and as a man very charming. He is intelligent and at the same time very practical. During the film shooting he creates a particular atmosphere. He loves his actors - and they respond to it, or at least they try to. The truth is that he wraps those who cooperates with him in his aura, a little in the way a spider spins its cobweb around its victim. Nobody can escape it. Nikita does it completely unconscious. He is just a man with charisma, and he doesn't know it exists.