Anna Friel: Actually I was totally nonplussed about football! I would never rush back from the pub to watch a match or anything. My family are not really sports fans and neither is my boyfriend so I guess I'd never really been exposed to it. I've never been to a live match but now having made this film I'm going to - I'm going to Real Madrid so it'll be done with a bang! The guts that are involved are incredible as well; I was doing a Broadway show and was nearly sick every night with nerves in front of 2,000 people, but to imagine walking into such a vast stadium and the chants and thousands booing you or chanting your name in a horrible rhyme is just absolutely frightening.

Anna Friel: Before we started the film Kuno and I talked a lot with the director about what we needed to bring on screen to make it believable; we felt it didn't need the sex scenes, it was the sweetness, not just the "hello, wham bam thank you mam". Things like how a breath on your cheek makes you tingle, how the touch of a finger can make you go weak at the knees. It was all about the subtlety on-screen and building up the intensity, you can actually see them fall in love as you watch. I also like the fact that the character isn't a typical footballer's wife, she doesn't need the bling and being at the forefront of everything. Now learning a bit more about footballers I think what they need to do well, is someone who really wants to stay in the background and just be a strong support.

Anna Friel: I think it is so much more tender, you don't want to know what they do together, it's not our business, you know what I mean? The nearest they get to it is when they do a kiss and that is really, really erotic because you are saying, 'go on, I really want you to kiss'. For me personally, everything is on a kiss.

Anna Friel: Well actually it was probably more, by the time I actually finished filming I was 25 weeks. I was fine up until 20 weeks, I'd shot everything and was OK, and then the designer got this great thing... the best way I can explain it is the very elasticized knickers that Bridget Jones wears, except with lots more elastic and with little hooks so you kind of pull them in. I could only wear them 15 minutes at a time and I had to take them off. I have the most lovely, healthy bouncing baby, she was all very compact and the right size. Obviously I would never do anything that would have ever put her at risk, it didn't, it just kept her very cosy. It is like one of the bands that you wear as you get bigger. Then by the last day we had to raise the camera up a bit, the designer by then said no elastic is going to hold that baby in!

Anna Friel: Well it's hard to bracket it like that because everyone always thinks you either go to America and you come back, fail or succeed, but it doesn't work like that. Last month I spent six months in New York working with Barry Levinson but I didn't want to stay there, I could have but I wanted to come home. I want more children but for the next three years I want to act. We will spend more time in America, we're going to get a place in LA as hotels aren't great for the baby. David is 13 years my senior and has much more experience. Being a mother gives you an incredible feeling of empowerment, you think if I can go through such pain and that level of sleep and still operate and not be grumpy you can do anything. It can be quite scary, you can't function your brain, forget your vocabulary.

Anna Friel: Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

Anna Friel: Harry Potter because her Daddy is in it, Professor Lupin... actually all the films he's been in so she can see. We have made a decision not to let her watch any television because they are so loud and patronising, they shout at them and it doesn't make for a calm child.

Anna Friel: As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible - my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.