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Sarsgaard, who's tackling an impressive and specifically dated British accent for the film and sticks with it as he sits down with RT, was won over by the secrets David keeps. "It's the oldest cheat in the world," he laughs, "especially if the audience learns that I have a secret. It makes me seem rather deep even if I'm rather shallow! It at least gives me two dimensions! Being an American playing a British person who is pretending to be another person, I mean, I'm already doing it. I'm doing it the moment I start speaking. It's such an easy role, in the greatest sense of that word. Sometimes I go home and I wonder if I'm doing a good job because it doesn't feel difficult."

Like the rest of the script, the period setting strives to set itself apart from most depictions of life in 60s Britain. This is not the primary-coloured pop-art age of partying as parodied in the likes of Austin Powers. "It's a clash of two eras," explains Scherfig, "It's more the very early elements that we sneak in here and there of a period that is going to explode the way Jenny's adult life will develop."


David, and his two friends Danny (Cooper) and Helen (Pike), represent what's to come. "They represent the fun and freedom Jenny will experience. It's pre-Beatles first album and pre-psychedelia, but there's a little touch of those things here and there. In the music as well - as you know Nick Hornby is very music-conscious and there are a lot of musical cues in the script."

"Come 1964, 1965," adds Sarsgaard, "I think they'll find they'll fit right in! You can picture them on the Isle of Wight listening to Jimi Hendrix a few years after the film is set."

From schoolgirl to woman, the time Jenny spends with David, Danny and Helen shapes her path into adulthood and towards that environment. Of course, on set they've been shooting out of order. "In the last two weeks we've been shooting everything with Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper, all the stuff in which Jenny goes through her transformation," says Mulligan. "And now we're back shooting the school days stuff. I'm back in school uniform and weirdly the crew have started talking to me differently! I'm 22, but I feel 16!"


As passionate as everyone is about the material - even if they are treating Mulligan like a teenager in the process - for Hornby, simply getting as far as assembling of a crew of people to make the film is a pleasure. "Everything's a long shot when you're writing a screenplay," he says. "At this stage of my career, if I write a novel to the best of my ability I would say there's a 100% chance of it being published. But if I write a screenplay to the best of my ability I would say there's a 10% chance of the film being made. That's an enormous difference in terms of your own psychology and your ability to get yourself up for each draft!"

Still, Hornby's novels usually arrive mostly fully-formed after the first draft, he says, and the extra time to refine the screenplay has proved invaluable. Mulligan has followed the changes. "I read the first draft in November 2006 and it has changed so much since then," she says. "And I got the part in September last year and it's changed even from then. It's been such a long time coming that it feels surreal we're doing it!"

An Education is released next year and we'll have more on the film, including full interviews with Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina, Nick Hornby and more closer to the time. You can find more exclusive images from the set of An Education right here.