There must be two Sir Richard Eyres. The one sitting opposite me in his agent’s office in Ladbroke Grove is totally at ease with the world, the epitome of calm in casual shirt and genial, thoughtful mood. Then there is the one who clearly never stops working. He has just finished one meeting, is off to another powwow straight after and the next day he flies out to the Toronto Film Festival.

The reason for this flurry of activity is The Other Man, which receives its first UK screening at the LFF. Following Eyre’s acclaimed Notes on a Scandal, this is based on a short story by German writer Bernhard Schlink and is another intimate master-class in mature cinema. Liam Neeson plays Peter, a businessman who discovers that his late wife (Laura Linney) was unfaithful. He traces her lover, Ralph (Antonio Banderas), planning revenge, but things take various unexpected turns. “It is about people’s interior lives,” says Eyre between sips of water. “That’s what fascinates me, that’s what I hope to go on doing.”

He might seem shy but, at 65, there is no sign of Eyre retiring. Particularly as he feels he only hit his stride as a movie director in his forties, “at an age when most directors are being told they are too old”. He has been directing for most of his adult life. He ran the Royal National Theatre from 1988 to 1997 and directed notable television films such as Tumble-down (1988), starring Colin Firth as the Falklands veteran Robert Lawrence, and the 1983 movie The Ploughman’s Lunch, which revealed the cynical underbelly of Thatcherism.

More recently Eyre moved into the premier league with Iris (2001) and Notes on a Scandal (2006), which both earned Dame Judi Dench Oscar nominations. He has also found time to be a BBC governor, write books and collect a knighthood in 1997.

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Iris and Notes on a Scandal are projects close to his heart. Iris – about the relationship between Iris Murdoch and John Bayley – because he drew on his own experiences of seeing his mother cope with Alzheimer’s; Notes on a Scandal because it cemented his working relationship with Patrick Marber, who wrote the screenplay based on Zoe Heller’s bestseller. “Patrick was one of my discoveries at the National. He just turned up and said he didn’t want to write for television any more and delivered Closer.” Both films also made their mark in America, proving that there is an audience for adult, literate film-making.

Eyre is well-positioned to compare stage and screen. There is, he muses, an anxiety in the run-up to a film release which he does not have when he is working in the theatre: “With theatre you know what you’ve got because you’ve got previews that tell you if it is really landing with an audience. But with a film where you do those crazy test screenings and score those cards it proves nothing.” Eyre’s sternest critics are his wife, Sue Birtwistle, a TV producer, and daughter Lucy. “They are both truth tellers. If I can’t convince them I’m not going to convince anybody.”

His earliest artistic encounters growing up in Barnstaple, Devon, were with Brando and James Dean but his first theatrical experience was an epiphany. “When I was 16 I saw Peter O’Toole play Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic. His hair was almost black, he had a wonderful nose. This was before Lawrence of Arabia and he was fantastic.” He had found his direction. Forty years later he directed his own unforgettable version with Daniel Day-Lewis as the Dane and Judi Dench as Gertrude.

At Sherborne school he was a natural radical who didn’t quite fit in, and he was eventually expelled after swearing at the chaplain. He also had difficulties at home. He has described his father as a “philistine”, whose main hobbies were drinking, riding and sex. He made advances towards his son’s girlfriends and was a distant, unsupportive figure. Eyre was understandably happy to leave for university.

After Cambridge, where he was tutored by Kingsley Amis, he was a “discontented actor” when he directed a stage version of the Swinging Sixties hit The Knack at the Leicester Phoenix. Things snowballed and in 1973 he moved to Nottingham Playhouse, where he formed lasting professional relationships. “I worked with Trevor Griffiths, David Hare, Howard Brenton. Then the BBC asked me to produce Play for Today and I said, with thoughtless arrogance, ‘absolutely, as long as I can direct’, so they agreed. I produced films with Stephen Frears and John Mackenzie then the first one I directed was The Imitation Game by Ian McEwan.”

He has been particularly canny in his casting. Neeson (who was in his production of The Judas Kiss) and Jonathan Pryce are two he admires, but the greatest, most formidable all-rounder is Judi Dench: “A film actor draws you in, whereas a theatre actor has a more mercurial quality. You need to feel a stage actor is thinking at the speed of light, that’s what is sexy in the theatre. Whereas what you want on screen is someone who can make a thought travel across their face in close-up while doing practically nothing. Judi does both. It is a rare talent and I wouldn’t say this about many people, but she is a genius.”

Eyre also has a winning track record when it comes to staging works that are already cinematic hits, such as Mary Poppins. “I’d seen it at university and thought it was a completely mockable event. Then I saw it again after 35 years and it was charming. Even Dick Van Dyke.” He went back to the original books and made a bolder version, homing in on the emotionally barren father, which had personal echoes. His father cast a shadow over other works too. When Ian Holm played Lear as an irascible tyrant at the National, Eyre’s sister was so struck by the resonances that she said: “Why have you put dad on stage?”

The burning question is does he prefer working in film or theatre? It is one he sidesteps with typical grace. “I just call myself a director and hope I’m not a dilettante. I hate it when actors say ‘I think I'll direct a movie’. Some can do it, but I like to think there is something I can bring to a play or film which is particular.”

The Other Man shows at OWE2, Oct 17, 8.30pm and Curzon Mayfair, Oct 19, 2pm

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