PETER Howitt is either that true rarity in the movie biz - a gifted actor who has successfully moved behind the camera to direct - or "a jammy git", as he puts it himself.
Either way, the 47-year-old former star of Liverpool-based comedy Bread seems thrilled with his mid-life career change.
Since making his directorial debut with Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors, which he also wrote, Peter has directed a huge international hit, Johnny English, and a not-so-huge film Anti Trust, where he met wife Lorraine.
Now he's back with The Laws Of Attraction, a romantic comedy starring Pierce Brosnan as a rumpled, low-profile, eccentric divorce lawyer who ends up falling for his complete opposite - the driven, ultra-professional, perfectly-coiffed and high-powered divorce attorney Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore).
But Peter very nearly missed out on the film, getting on board only a month before the cast and crew began shooting, after another director left the project.
"I'd just finished working on Johnny English, which you either loved or hated," explains Peter.
"I was rather looking forward to finally going home to Vancouver and seeing my wife - and then there was a rather freaky Sliding Doors-y kind of story which stopped me.
"The night before I left London to head home, I was sitting in this empty flat and said to my mate, let's go to the cinema and see Far From Heaven.
"And while I was watching Julianne Moore in it, the weirdest thing happened: I suddenly pictured myself on a set with her, and my wife was there and they were chatting. Then I forgot all about it, and later when I got back home there was this e-mail from my manager - which he'd sent at exactly the same time as I'd had my little vision about Julianne - saying they wanted me to consider me to direct her and Pierce in this film. I'm not making this up!"
Peter was sure it was fate but Julianne wasn't so easily convinced.
"I was a bit nervous about meeting her," Peter remembers, "but she was just charming and delightful, and I told her the story and also that when I went on my first ever date with my wife Lorraine it was to see End of the Affair, which she starred in."
