Oscar winner Colin Firth says his latest role as a tortured POW was a struggle - mostly due to the sunny surrounds of Queensland.
Firth says it was hard to get inside the mind of someone who was being tortured while surrounded by the warm environment of the Gold Coast, and a friendly, funny Australian crew.
"It's been bliss," he told reporters on Tuesday after three days of filming for The Railway Man.
"It's hard to go to work and work yourself up into a state of torment.
"It's a complicated journey, someone trying to find forgiveness for something which is arguably unforgivable.
"It was an extraordinarily powerful experience."
He was also full of praise for Aussie Nicole Kidman, who plays his wife.
"Some things are just easy," he laughed.
"An awful lot of this movie I just had to imagine how things were possible (but), that, I did not have to imagine. She did the most beautiful job."
Firth says he had no idea how he was going to approach the torture scenes until he saw how his co-star was doing it.
"That opened everything up and transformed it and I found it an extraordinarily powerful experience," he said.
Filming for The Railway Man will continue for three more weeks at a POW camp set built in the Numinbah Valley, behind the Gold Coast, and at the old railway yards in Ipswich, west of Brisbane.
