British export Matthew Goode has no idea what he's in for. In his new film Leap Year, Goode plays a smolderingly cynical barkeep who's mending a broken heart when tasked with driving a determined American (Amy Adams) across Ireland to propose to her boyfriend. Though he's left his mark in films like Brideshead Revisited and Woody Allen's Match Point, his newest role is bound to catapult him to the top of the box office—and into the hearts of American women everywhere.

But that's not Goode's only romantic role of the moment. He's earning critical acclaim for his turn as Colin Firth's longtime partner in Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man.

The charming actor chats candidly about whether he's really ready for women to toss knickers at him, his childbirth advice for Amy Adams and what it was like to kiss Colin Firth.
Joan Wagner: Congratulations on the film! What attracted you to the project?
Matthew Goode: To be honest with you, I'd done four quite serious films beforehand, and my other half and I were about to have a baby within a couple of months when we first got the script. And Amy Adams, she's a fab actress and I just loved [director] Anand Tucker's Hillary and Jackie, so all those components together meant that I was like, "Let's go to Ireland and have a bit of fun."

JW: Was your daughter born during filming?
MG: She was 3 months old when we started; she's 19 [months] now. We tried hanging out in the hotel—me, the missus, the baby and our puppy boxer as well. The girls had to go home after, like, three weeks because it was driving them insane, and me too. I had to keep hold of the dog. It was the bane of my life for the entire time I was there because I couldn't get a house because no one would rent a house to me with a dog. Luckily, the Marion Hotel allowed me to stay there with my dog the entire time. It did mean effectively leaving 20 quid notes underneath the pillows because every other morning the dog would piss on the bed during the night and it was like, "They're just going to think it's me—incontinent Matthew Goode."

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