At the 54th BFI London Film Festival I caught up with Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield for their upcoming film Never Let Me Go, the much anticipated movie based on Kauzo Ishiguro's acclaimed novel of the same name. I had the good fortune of attending the press screening this morning and I have to say it's one of the most tender, brooding and all around fantastic movies of the year! Check out what they had to say below.

How much of a responsibility did you feel towards the book?

Andrew Garfield: I think it's very rare that you find a script that is so full of what it is to be alive, to be human and the struggles that we collectively go through, it has massive existential question marks. As actors you search for that meaningful material and when it comes along you feel it instantly. There are terrible scripts, there are good scripts and then there are scripts like this one. I think none of us hesitated in being a part of this beautiful story.

Carey Mulligan: I read the book when it came out and loved it, I always loved it first and foremost because it's a love story and it's about…um…you can want very simple things from life but not get them. Keira and I had done Pride & Prejudice together, we've done adaptations of Dickens and Austin and other things by authors who are not around to tell you off if you've got it wrong (laughs), so this was a lot more intimidating because we had Kazuo Ishiguro with us, and we wanted to do everything he imagined when he wrote it - and also for the people who have read the book and fell in love with it, so there was more pressure.

From reading the book and knowing who else was going to be in the film I always felt we were all on the same page and that we were going to make the same film. We were all so in love with it, we were big fans of the book and found out so much more about the book by doing it.

With director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland doing such a fantastic job capturing the book, was everything you needed to portray the characters in the script? Or did you find yourself referring back to the book?

Carey Mulligan: We were with the book the whole time, the script was perfect, I don't think a line was changed from when I first read it Febuary of last year to when we shot. We also had a great environment to work in with Mark. Mark had a copy of the book with him all the time, I had a copy of the book with me, we all had the book with us the whole time, we always would refer to that. We had a brilliant script but especially for me the whole book is narrated by my character, so I felt like I had to refer to it. Also it's great to go back to it for ideas, you can play a scene a certain way, then you can find one line that could inspire you to do something different.

Andrew Garfield: Yeah I think across the board everyone was deeply reverent to the source material, whether he likes it or not (laughs), I think he gets a little sick by how reverent we were, we still bow when he enters the room and make him very uncomfortable (laughs), it's fun to watch. I think collectively we all had the same intention, that intention sprang from Kasou's story

Seeing as you've both starred in Blockbusters and the more critically acclaimed films, do you have different approaches to them at all?

Andrew Garfield: No not for me, I'm pretty sure I can say we all approach every job as if it were our last and our first. You don't look at it from a perspective of a big film, or a small film, you don't think I have to be REALLY good in this. I think you just have to work hard at what you care about. Carey and Keira I respect greatly because they do projects that means something to them, I'm speaking for them right now though (laughs), but I'm sure they don't discriminate in terms of size or any of that kind of thing, it's not an issue.

Carey Mulligan: That was very well said (laughs).

How much of a challenge was it to be a part of a project that is so full of emotion?

Andrew Garfield: I find it easier to cry than to make people laugh (laughs).

Carey Mulligan: It is, it's always harder to maintain raw enthusiasm or joy than to go into a really dark place. I think for us with this it was trying not to cry, I cry all the time, it's my modus operandi (laughs). We all wanted to mark each other and say don't drop a tear, we were all watching each other. With our characters we didn't want to portray tragedy, we just wanted to live in the circumstances we were in and the circumstances we had.