When a project comes to you, do you look at it first as an actor or as a director?
I ask myself some basic questions — do I think it’s good? Does it affect me somehow? Do I feel something when I’m reading it? Am I interested? Does it surprise me? If I get answers to all these questions then I give thumbs up to a movie. Argo was a nail-biting thriller, a comedy and an incredible CIA spy story, all rolled into one. The fact that it was true completely blew me away. So, as soon as I read it, I looked it up on the Internet. I wanted to know whether all this stuff really happened. And then I thought, ‘I’ve got to do this movie.’

Ben Affleck as CIA agent Tony Mendez in Argo