The actor was told to act like smoke by Terrence Malick and saw Peter Bogdanovich soak his cravat in iced water before he wore it. She talks about shooting with Kristen Stewart, investigative acting, and filming The Teacher in Palestine

Imogen Poots has a confession. “I drew a man’s penis too big recently,” she says, her anime eyes widening. The 35-year-old London-born actor is sitting at home in New York in an olive baseball cap. Willygate occurred at a life-drawing class she attends in Brooklyn. “The art teacher said I needed to get my proportions right, so I erased what I’d done. But then the model, who looked like a young Sam Shepard, came over and saw where the original penis had been, and realised it had been downsized.” She is pondering whether to find another class. “There’s a bunch all over the city but I’m running out of options.”

She already had to flee one through no fault of her own. “There was a man there who glommed on to the fact that I’m an actress. Another man was drawing me instead of the model. It was the model who told me, which then affected how I drew her. It all felt kind of meta. Other people had witnessed our conversation, too, which made it deeply uncomfortable. I don’t handle those things well. I’m pathologically polite but inside there’s a burning furnace.” She thinks this over. “That’s Englishness, I guess.”