Since then, Frears has enjoyed success both here in the U.S. and at home in England with numerous BAFTAs and films as diverse as “High Fidelity” and “The Grifters” — for which he was nominated for an Oscar — as well as the ultra-English “The Queen” and “Mrs. Henderson Presents.” He’s dealt with modern-day cowboys (1998’s “The Hi-Lo Country”), English fascism (2000’s “Liam”), the monarchy (2006’s “The Queen”), and the illegal trade of human organs (2002’s “Dirty Pretty Things”). When George Clooney decided he wanted to try a live television remake of “Fail Safe” back in 2000, Frears handled the chore to no shortage of acclaim.

Frear’s latest, “Tamara Drewe,” has fared reasonably well with critics on the whole, though not so much with this particular longtime admirer. An adaptation of a graphic novel originally serialized in England’s The Guardian by cartoonist and children’s book author Posy Simmonds, the tale is a comic, modern-day homage to Thomas Hardy’s tragic 1874 novel, Far From the Madding Crowd starring Gemma Arterton as a formerly large nosed “ugly duckling” whose swannish post-operative return to her family’s estate sparks chaos at a writer’s retreat in ultra-picturesque rural England.

Apparently taking the casualness of California fully to heart, the 69-year-old Frears, who bears some resemblance to the late Rodney Dangerfield, arrived unshaven and in a t-shirt that had seen better days. If the “just rolled out of bed” look was disconcerting, however, we needn’t have worried. Frears was in good spirits and clearly enjoys sharing his views with the press.

We started with a declaration that Frears is something of a throwback in another way, in that he’s not exactly a member of the Comic-Con generation. “I’ve only read one graphic novel in my life,” which, of course, was Posy Simmonds’ Tamara Drewe, which began it’s life as a weekly strip in England’s The Guardian.

So was this project different than anything he’d done before?

“Yes, but they always are. That’s what’s nice about them. I thought it was great.”

The next question shifted gears somewhat, asking whether the “Tamara Drewe” cast and crew were welcomed by the locals in the idyllic and pricey section of the English countryside where the movie was filmed.

“They were very nice to us, but I also have a house in Dorset… so I know a lot about it. No, I make no attempt to integrate with my neighbors, which I think they really like. If you try to integrate, they don’t like [that].”

From there, we moved on quickly to the topic of working with some potentially dangerous members of Frears’ cast for “Tamara Drewe” — a herd of cows and two scene-stealing teenage girls, Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie.

“The girls were wonderful. We were just lucky. You choose them and you take care, but in the end it’s a fluke. Sometimes they turn out to be infinitely better than you ever imagined. And the cows… I made a Western, so I’m a master of directing cows. I must certainly now be the only man in the world who’s ever directed both a cattle drive and a stampede. Is that right? Did Clint ever do it? He doesn’t make films about cows.”

I assume Frears meant living directors. I know for a fact Howard Hawks directed a stampede in “Red River,” and the entire movie is pretty much a cattle drive, and I’m sure he had company among other Western directors of the classic era. On the other hand, Hawks and the rest mostly avoided movies with more than one teenage girl in the cast.

Speaking of female teens and things that they like, someone brought up the topic of the fictional rock band, Swipe, led by Dominic Cooper’s neurotically prissy Ben Sergeant. The film features a few original songs by the fictitious band that were actually written by Nathan Cooper, which may open the film to charges of movie nepotism. Did Frears’ make the selection?

“I’m an elderly gentlemen. The film is produced by [British pop star] Lily Allen’s mother [Alison Owen]. I said to her, “You know far more about this. You do this. I’m not quite sure of the pedigree of Dominic’s brother, [but] one day I went down and they sounded great and I said, ‘You do that song rather than that song.'”

[Note: You can read more about the Cooper brothers’ band, Dagmar, in this previously posted roundtable chat with Cooper and “Tamara Drewe” co-star Luke Evans.]

So, how did Frears select Cooper and leading lady Gemma Arterton for their roles?

“Dominic I’d seen for another film and said he wasn’t right, which he’ll tell you about rather bitterly. And my casting director said, ‘You want Dominic Cooper,” and I said ‘Oh, okay’ because I’m a good boy. And Gemma, she more or less said ‘You want Gemma.’ I’d been told how good she was. I met her and she was wonderful. She was gorgeous, she was witty, and nice. Everyone said what a good actress she was, and she looked like the girl in the book.”

Another one of us brought up Frears’ DVD commentary for “High Fidelity.” He asked whether what sounded like a somewhat loose casting process for this recent film was much different than the process that led to the breakthrough casting of Jack Black in his breakthrough role as a record store clerk who acts a lot like Jack Black.

Not really. “I remember saying, ‘Who should play this part?” and the boys [presumably John Cusack and creative partners D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, and Scott Rosenberg] said ‘Jack Black.’ And Jack came in to see me and after ten minutes I said, ‘Well, you’ll be fine.’ And that freaked him out.”

“Tamara Drewe” was kind of the same then?

“What I mean is that someone comes in who makes sense of everything. I mean, I didn’t know that Jack was going to act the way he acted. Nobody told me that. I had to learn that, but you meet him and say, ‘Yes, this bloke seems great.'”

Then, I finally got my chance to express my Frears fandom and ask about how it seems to me that his films fall into two broad categories. There are complex interlocking tales with multiple subplots like “Tamara Drewe,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” and his underrated 1987 “Beautiful Laundrette” follow-up, “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” while others tend to involve very intense relationships among a smaller group. I mentioned my personal favorite, “The Hit,” which boils down to four people in a car. I got some interesting news for my trouble.

“We’re going to try and do a remake of ‘The Hit,” said Frears dropping a small bombshell and quickly moving on. “I like handling all these stories — no, it’s not that,” Frears stopped himself. “What I really like is a sort of complete universe. If someone comes to me with a complete universe, people are bound to have complex relationships. All these peoples’ lives intersect in unexpected ways.”

I had to follow up about that remake news.

“Somebody bought the remake rights. Some American studio. We said, ‘Why, was it that bad?’ I once flew on a plane next to [British cult writer] David Bailey, who said ‘I’m coming out to do a remake of your film.’ And then the producer came to me and then [I] thought, ‘What a good idea to remake it with Americans.’ It might well be set in Mexico. I think they’re going to Mexico in a few days time.” (The original version, written by novelist Peter Prince, was set mostly in Spain.)

And how will Frears be involved in this new version? As a director?

“I’d like to be asked — it has to be written first. I think it’s a bloody good idea.”

Then came a question about Frear’s style of working with actors. Those are loaded words with Frears.

“I don’t really have a style. I’d scarcely describe it as ‘work.’ I choose them carefully and then I really leave it up to them. They generally seem to me to be intelligent, sensible people and do what I more or less expect. If something’s odd, I have a conversation with them. I prefer it to come from them than to come from me.”

From there, we returned to the topic of working with animals and teenage actors Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie after one of the writers referred to the need to have handlers for both animals and minors.

“These girls were over 16, so we didn’t have handlers,” Frears said, making a semi-mumbled joke about “children wranglers.”

What about the actual animal wranglers? They’ve been known to get in the way of a filmmaker’s intention at times.

“There was a farmer — you had to deal with him as a human being. There wasn’t anybody [who was a problem]. The woman who handled the dog, for example, was an extremely sensible woman. I remember there was sort of a row about geese and ducks, but I mean it was quite straightforward. The truth is that, if people are irritating, you hope to God they won’t end up working with you.”

But what about the scene where canine performer Boss, who won the Palm Dog at Cannes for his troubles, appeared to be chasing a herd of cows? Didn’t that require a lot pre-planning and discussion?

“I don’t remember one conversation about it. We put the dog in amongst the cows and shot it, probably on two cameras. You’d see the cows being chased, and slowly the cows would turn ’round and start to attack the dog. It was very very funny… You sort of do it. I could see the farmer didn’t like us putting the dog [close] to his cattle too many times. You try to be sensible.”

But Frears was making the filmmaking process sound like such a breeze, even during some fairly ambitious scenes in a relatively low-budget environment. There must have been some difficult days?

“The stampede was very difficult, but I say this openly, it was very well thought out, it was very well designed. You’re basically funneling them into a bottleneck where there was a water trough. Then, you run wires down the sides and I guess you probably don’t feed the cattle for a few hours so that they want to get somewhere.”

After some brief talk about weather, it segued to a question about what led to his choice of production designer Alan MacDonald, who also worked with Frears on “The Queen” and 2009’s “Cheri.”

The answer was simple. “He’s good. The truth is, you work with these very clever people. I first heard about this on [“Dangerous Liaisons”] where we worked with dazzling design people. What you’re trying to find is a way of holding a conversation with them. What I can’t do is compete with them. I really trust the designers I work with. They know far more about it than I do. If something’s wrong, I’ll say it, if it’s wrong, but I more or less trust people. I’ve no reason to feel let down.”

How did having Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel available, which Frears described in the “Tamara Drewe” press notes as a sort of de facto storyboard, affect his manner of shooting?

“It was just there. Because it was a graphic novel you sort of wanted the film to honor the spirit of that, but it was just there so I can’t remember where I used it or didn’t use it. Sometimes, we’d go out to recreate a particular frame because it was so beautiful. Posy had told the story very wittily.”

Had he read Posy Simmonds’ column in The Guardian as well as the graphic novel?

“I’d read the column. I’ve known her for about 30 years. She’s such a brilliant woman and she tells the story very, very wittily. I’ve come to see that she does what I do. ‘I’ll do the scene in a long shot,’ ‘I’ll do the scene like this.’ She’s really making the same kind of decisions that I have to make.”

Since “Tamara Drewe” deals with writers, who are sometimes afflicted with this thing called “writer’s block,” was there some kind of directorial equivalent?

“Sometimes you just get bored of yourself. I go and teach to try and deal with other people’s problems because my own head becomes so repetitive. It’s not like you get ‘blocked,’ you just want a sort of rest. There’s a sense in which, you make a film. Well, then what do you do? You make another film. That’s if you’re lucky. So it can be repetitive.”

Is that why he jumps around so much with different types of films?

“I think it’s boredom, yeah. The idea of repeating myself [is not appealing]. If you said to ‘Now go down to Dorset and make another film,’ I wouldn’t be very enthusiastic, but I had the most wonderful time doing it.”

The next question was about cinematographer Ben Davis, described with some accuracy as “one of the stars of the film” because of the sumptuous countryside visuals. Davis is probably best known for his strong work with another versatile British-born director, Matthew Vaughn, on “Layer Cake,” “Stardust,” and “Kick-Ass.” Aside from being “a lovely fellow” as Frears described him, what went into the choice to work with him for the first time on “Tamara Drewe”?

“I had a choice of three cameramen. For some reason it came down to three people, I don’t know by what principle. He came to see me and he talked very intelligently about the book. He was very modest and someone said he’s very fast.”

“You know, a film like this — I think the photography’s wonderful, but if the photography’s the star, you’re sort of sunk, really. In the end, it’s about the actors and it’s about the jokes. So, you want someone who is instinctively quite self-effacing. He was a joy. Really lovely. Very straightforward with a good sense of humor.”

After some praise for the endless invention of veteran British performers, I was allowed another question which, on reflection, Frears must have heard a few thousand times before. Are there any genres he hasn’t yet worked in that he’d especially like a whack at?

“I don’t know. I don’t think like that. What I really like is the surprise. Someone sends you a script and you open it, and you think, ‘Blimey, I never thought of that before.'”

So, someone else asked, Frears won’t be directing “The Hobbit”? (This was before Peter Jackson officially came on board the project.)

“There’s already about 17 people making ‘The Hobbit.'”

Then another question brought up the fact that, by her count, six actresses had received Oscar nominations for working in his films. What in Frears’ style, a style which Frears once again reminded us he doesn’t possess, might be associated with this track record?

“If I was being provocative, I’d say that it’s the fact that I don’t have a style. In other words, I make the film. I don’t worry about my oeuvre. I just get on with it. You deal with what’s in front of you.”

And what does he hope audiences will take away from his latest film?

“I hope you had a good time. When I grew up, you went to see films, I guess most of them made in Hollywood or at British studios. They were, I suppose, what you would call ‘commercial’ films. They were also generally rather intelligent and made by people — really good, really intelligent — like Hawks or Hitchcock or George Stevens. Then, somehow, cinema got separated and these terrible things called “art films” appeared. I expect, if I go to the cinema, to be entertained, among other things. I also expect films to be perceptive and interesting and whatever it is. I don’t separate.”

Then Frears referred to the death of Tony Curtis, with a nod to “Some Like It Hot.” “When you went to see a Billy Wilder film, you didn’t sit around thinking, ‘This is commercial’ or ‘This isn’t art.’ It was just good and generally entertaining. But I’m rather old fashioned and I can see I’m rather foolish. You just went to see something that was enjoyable and generally was intelligent, as though intelligence and enjoyment weren’t separable. ”

“Tamara Drewe,” a romantic farce with tragic overtones that opened this week for its initial run in four theaters in L.A. and New York, stars Arterton as an autobiographical newspaper columnist whose recent plastic surgery has transformed her from large-nosed semi-ugly duckling to tiny-nosed brunette bombshell. It’s a comedy with tragic overtones drawn from the the graphic novel of the same name by cartoonist Posy Simmonds, which is itself a sort of homage to Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd.” The film was directed by Stephen Frears, a director noted for tremendous versatility who confuses us critics by changing his style with just about every film. His output has ranged from from such recently enjoyable, grandma-friendly arthouse fare as “The Queen” and “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” to low down tales of crime and skullduggery like my personal favorite, 1984’s “The Hit.”

I was not blown away by much about this particular movie, however, including parts of Arterton’s performance, but that’s me. It has fared reasonably well over at Rotten Tomatoes and may well please other fans of this sort of English countryside comedy, which I usually enjoy myself. Ms. Arterton has also generated good reviews in “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” as well as co-starring in “Clash of the Titans,” “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and as Strawberry Fields in “Quantum of Solace” alongside Daniel Craig’s 007, forever tagging herself with the sobriquet “Bond girl.” Still, at 24, she has a maturity and self-possession about her that, at the very least, makes her more of a Bond woman. Or maybe it’s just that she’s tall.

The first question asked was in regards to whether Ms. Arterton was comfortable in the countryside setting of “Tamara Drewe.”

“I think I belonged there,” the actress responded. “Like Tamara, I think I’m actually supposed to be there. I was brought up in estuary London, on the Thames estuary, in an industrial town, but all my family are fishermen and farmers. That was the generation before, but I think we are supposed to be there. I did like it, but after about two weeks I freaked out and needed to have pollution and buses driving past every minute.”

Then came a question about the impressive prosthetic nose sported by Arterton during some flashbacks set prior to her character’s life-changing rhinoplasty. Did that false nose resonate personally in any way?

“I always wanted to have a big nose. No, everyone has insecurities, but I’m not going to tell you guys about that.”

She did, however, keep the movie proboscis. “It’s one of my most treasured possessions. It’s in a frame in my downstairs loo where you always keep novelty things. It’s got a picture of me — it was given to me by the hair and make-up artist — scowling, wearing it. It says ‘Gemma, darling, you never looked better!'”

Even though “Tamara Drewe” is only based on “Far from the Madding Crowd” at one remove, did she look at the 19th century novel by Thomas Hardy?

“Yeah, because when we were filming it, Stephen was sort of ‘it’s not ‘Far From the Madding Crowd,’ but I actually believe that Bathsheba from ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ is Tamara Drewe, but 200 years before. She absolutely is. So, for me, it’s really helpful to read that. I’ve played two Thomas Hardy heroines now and they’re incredible characters. They are unbelievably advanced and Thomas Hardy had such an insight on the complicated world of being a woman.”

“These characters are conundrums; we never really completely get them. Especially Bathsheba — she’s promiscuous, she’s petulant, she’s spoiled, yet everybody loves her, yet she gets her own way. Why do we like her? We don’t know, but there’s something about her. She’s a heroine. She’s kind of like Cathy from ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Stephen, I suppose, was very much thinking about the film, and it’s ‘Tamara Drewe’ and it’s modern. But, for me, it was another thing to draw on, and it’s such good material. I thought, ‘Why not use that?'”

Someone confessed that Ms. Arterton had broken their hearts on multiple occasions.

“Because I always die?”

No, and she doesn’t die in every movie. It was more her ability to actually cry believably onscreen. How does she manage it?

“When I was at drama school, everyone used to try and cry all the time, because it showed that they were a good actor, right? I never could do it, so I thought, I’m never going to act ever, because I can’t cry. Then, I did [the 2007 BBC dramatization of] ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and I had to cry and I couldn’t stop crying. I actually cried too much in it. I don’t know, I just think like the character when I’m doing it.”

“When I was playing Tamara, I would write every day, before I went on set, a little journal, or a part of her book, either one, just to get into her thought patterns. Then, you start thinking like the character and then, when something makes you cry, it makes you cry. I don’t really know how it happens. If you asked me to cry now, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m not sad.”

My turn: Since, as Tamara Drewe, Ms. Arterton was laboring to think like a writer, I asked if she’d ever written anything herself.

“No. It’s funny. I’d never had the confidence to and I’d always admired writers and their ability to say, ‘Here it is, read this. This is what I think or what I’m trying to convey.’ Then…I always do it with characters, I write a backstory. With Tamara it just became this sort of autobiography which she does ultimately write, and it was really funny. I remember writing it and showing it to Moira Buffini, who wrote the screenplay. She [said], ‘This is really good. You’re really good.’ I said, ‘Maybe that’s because I’m writing as the character.’ I’m not writing my own life, it’s dull as dishwater, but as Tamara it’s sort of sassy and sparky. So, maybe that’s what I should do if I want to write, just be different characters each day and dress up.”

Maybe she should try dressing up as William Shakespeare, I suggested.

“Yeah. I may get on to a winner with that one.”

Then came the semi-inevitable question about what is was like to work with Stephen Frears as an actor. Did she think the famously style-free director actually had a style in regards to directing actors?

“I don’t think he does because he works very differently with every single actor. Everybody on set he works differently with. He’s just very sensitive to everything. I suppose with me he was very intuitive. He really trusts his intuition. The main thing is that he spends most of his energy and time casting it correctly. Really. Not just getting the right person to play that character, but getting the right three people so that the relationships work. It’s all taken care of. That’s genius casting. We never rehearsed, ever. We’d just get on the set and it’d work because all the actors were right for it. Then he’d direct it if it needed to go over there, or you were overdoing it a little bit, or he needed to see more of [something], but it was very sort of simple.”

“He’d hate me saying that because he hates it being called ‘simple.’ But it was, it was straightforward. When you see every single film Stephen’s done, he’s creates this world, utterly. You believe it, and that’s where his energy lies. He trusts everybody he works with to do their job. He doesn’t have to tell anyone what to do. That’s how he works.”

That led to another predictable question with a predictable answer regarding whether the actress would like to work with Frears again. Of course she would, though she noted Frears proclivity for variety and that it was a couple of decades between his working with Michelle Pfeiffer in 1988’s “Dangerous Liaisons” and last year’s “Cheri.” (The gap was only one decade for John Cusack, who worked with Frears on 1990’s “The Grifters” and 2000’s “High Fidelity.”)

That was followed by some very spoilery, but interesting, talk about the character of Tamara Drewe, who Arterton feels is perhaps not so much in love — or even in like — with any of the men in the film as wanting to be loved by everyone. “She needs constant affection and attention. She gets herself into these dramatic situations because she writes about them. She sort of is her own muse, in a way. She uses everybody around her in order to do that…”

“One of the reasons I wanted to play Tamara is that I see that character often in many different ways in people I work with. I’ve known one particular writer that manipulates and creates drama in order to write about it. I just think it’s accurate. I think it’s real.”

Then came a comment I found particularly interesting. “When I first read the script, I thought, ‘I don’t even like her. Why are we watching a movie about her? Who cares about this sad girl?’ And then I thought, ‘Hang on, I need to play her because I need to work out why this book has become such a hit. There’s something about her.’ That’s why I wanted to play her. Ultimately, it’s because you pity her, I think.”

“Everyone can relate to someone or something that happened in this film at some point. I think that’s the beauty of it. All the characters are flawed. They’re all struggling. They’re not doing very well. They’re running their own lives like the rest of the world. When you watch [most] movies, everything sort of turns out okay in the end. This one doesn’t, really — it sort of hangs.”

The topic of creating drama led to a question about the two teenage girls, very well played by Charlotte Christie and Jessica Barden, who emerge as major plot catalysts.

“They are like these little imps that [make trouble via social media]. I was just talking about this whole self publication [via Twitter, Facebook, etc.] or whatever you call it. Tamara does that. She publicizes herself through her work. She’s happy to write about her own experiences. It’s ironic that these two girls come in and tamper with her life and she can’t deal with it,” Arterton said laughing. “They create the drama she can’t.”

Some more discussion of Tamara Drewe’s romantic quandaries — how Arterton sees her as being genuinely attracted to aspects of all three of the males she becomes entangled with during the story despite not actually loving any of them — finally gave way to a question brought on by the fanish obsession of the teenage characters for Tamara’s rock star boyfriend played by Dominic Cooper. As a teen, did she have a rock star or actor obsession? Has she had a chance to meet or even work with said star(s)?

“I haven’t actually [met] my high school crush. I actually fancied an actor, because I was always into actors, obviously. I’m reluctant to tell you who it is just because now I actually might meet him. I don’t have a crush on him anymore but, yeah…”

“Oh come on, who is he?” said the inquiring mind, who happened to also be from England.

“Oh, alright, then. It was Leonardo DiCaprio when I was 12 years-old. You never know, you might meet them. I never thought I’d have the opportunity to meet him. But it was never in that obsessive, writing fan mail, chasing down the street sort of way. It’s because we’re English,” she concluded with a chuckle. “We’d never do that. We’d never degrade ourselves in that way.”