People think I'm not aware of the trickery, but I've got big eyes. I see all the stuff'

US-based Imogen Poots talks to Patrick Smith about attitude problems, acting in Kristen Stewart's directorial debut, rites of passage, and why Oasis make her want to return to Britain

- Patrick Smith

A few years back, a director told Imogen Poots she had an “attitude problem”.

“I thought [his] idea was silly,” she tells me. “But he said that to me in front of a whole crowd of people, which was lame. He was a nice man, but we weren't creatively right for one another at all, and it's funny in hindsight how me not feeling comfortable, or not understanding something, warranted that comment. He was treating me like a kid. But at this point I see it as a compliment. Yay for attitude problems.”

We're in a bar in Soho the day after the London Film Festival premiere of Hedda, a rambunctious rejig of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that demands no niceties of its combative leading lady. The blonde hair, half up, half down, tumbles disorderly. “My tolerance for bullshit has always been pretty primed,” the 36-year-old star of 28 Weeks Later (2007) and the Oscar-winning dementia drama The Father (2020) continues. “People have often assumed I’m not aware of the trickery, but I’ve got big eyes. I see all the stuff.” Those Disney-proportioned, bullshit-detecting blue eyes blink and widen like a cat spotting its own reflection.