Freddie Highmore in August Rush Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

For August Rush you made the transition to an American accent. Does that mean that you're potentially going to start looking at more American roles?
Yeah, I guess. I did another film with an American accent that is coming out next year, The Spiderwick Chronicles. I get to play twins in that. It was good because it was two American accents and trying to make them sound distinct from one another, so that was another challenge with the accent.

So you are following in the great tradition of actors Jeremy Irons and Lindsay Lohan by playing twins. That must have been really demanding.
Yeah. But it was good fun at the same time. The craziest thing was if you're just doing a scene like talking to myself, they have a camera over there and they keep it still and have motion control so it does the same movements. I'm talking to nothing, and then I have to go and then play the other character and talk to nothing again. But when they put them together, it works out and it looks good, so you've just got to trust. And I think that's true with August Rush as well, because of the three different story lines. Kirsten [would be] saying: "Now you've got to close your eyes and I am going to go inside your head and come out in the other person's life, or the back story," you've got to have trust.

When you're working with your costars, do you pick up a lot from them? Do you think your education in acting is coming mainly from being on the set? Do you attend acting lessons?
No, I don't have. No lessons. I haven't been to acting school ever or anything like that. I guess it's just come from working on different films. We get more experienced like that. And I've had the chance to work with some amazing actors, and so, yeah, you do learn things from them.

You have worked with Johnny Depp twice (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Finding Neverland). What did you pick up from those experiences?
I think with Johnny Depp, one thing he does fantastically is sort of understating it on a big emotion. If it's really an emotional scene, you don't want someone always to be, you know, crying really loudly and shouting and being angry. But sometimes it's nice just to have them be quiet and internal. And I think that August is a bit like that. It's more inside him, and he's got the belief inside him that he's going to go out and find his parents.