you know, am i the only acker that could play it? no.i bring, i hope, i bring an interesting, an interesting life to it. >> and you can do stillness and at the same time it has expression. >> i hope. >> katherine stock ard's book the hell is an em nant story about racism in the deep south of the dawn of the civil rights movement. viola davis shines as cooper, a maid working in a white household it is a very personal role for davis whose's own life mirrors the experience in some ways. >> they killed my son. he fell carrying 2 x 4s at the mill. truck ran over him, crushed his lung. >> that that you his body on the back of a truck, drove him to the coloured hospital. dumped him there and honked a horn. >> an lean clark is a maid in 1962, mississippi. when are you introduced to her in the story she has lost her son, 24 years old. she lost him in an industrial accident and she is basically dead inside. she has decided to stop working. she's depressed and then decides to go back and work for a young girl and then through the course of the stor

the thing it is stuff i-- tough i think of being an acker is you do the best and you but you don't controldit. you have to really trust the directory put your best work out there yes. >> yeah, although i have a habit of producing and i have produced this one too, which means you can be around to kind of get the gnarlly bits out. >> jon: that's very smart. >> yeah. >> jon: what if, and this is just from my experience as an actor, what if everything you've done is a gnarly bit. >> is naturally. >> you just go bankrupt and you never release the film. >> jon: that is the mistake i've made in my acting career. >> yeah. >> jon: i've had my films res released. have you directed some as well. >> no. >> stephen: . >> jon: is that something would you like to try. >> no, no, no skrz what is -- >> no, no,. >> jon: so yet. >> no. >> jon: so that's a maybe. >> no. >> jon: so you are saying would you like to direct. >> possibly, probe possibly, no, no, really not in any sense. i'm too lady-- lazy by far, no really. >> jon: so you produce the movie, you act in the movie but directing, that is where you dr

joining me acker simon callow who played dickens in theatre and on information. his new book is you will cad charles dickens and t great theatre of the world and robert douglas-fairhurst. his new biography is called becoming dicken, the invention of a novelist n new york with me jill lepore work on a book about dinks in america. john romano who wrote intolerable create, a professor at columbia and salman rushdie the author of midnight children, satanic versus and other backs, also a life lock dickens enthusiast and i'm pleased to have all of these guests here and to ta about charles dickens on this 20h anniversary. i begin with you, why dickens what is it about dickens that makes you continue to -- >> well, for me one of the things was reading dickens before i ever came to the west, you know, was that these cities that dickens describes, great rotting metropolis of dickens felt like the city outside my window if you grow newspaper a city like bombay or deli t feels exactly like dickensian london t has exactly that characteristic of corruption and filth. and then

the other kind of acker that's a dis-- anger that's a disaffection is a disappointment. we've been telling people around the world what we stand for. bolivia doesn't tell people what it stands for. belgium doesn't tell people what it stands for. china always acts in its own interests, doesn't have to stand for anything. this is a unique place. and because we are also a nation that's national security is the first obligation of its government, we've always had to run policies that whether they're wise or not -- and they're often wise -- will run in conflict with our announced goals, with our announced principles. it's often avoidable when you're a society based on principles. the things we do are things that people expect us to do the way they see them. when we do come to the aid of those seeking to bring down gadhafi, we're meeting that expectation. when we are the people supporting mubarak, we're flying conflict with that expectation. it doesn't mean we have to do what others expect of us. we have to do what we have to do. but we shouldn't be surprised when we're runnin