‘John McEnroe was my reference point’: how we made hit Mozart movie Amadeus

‘Doing the piano-playing scenes was like doing stunt work’ … Tom Hulce in Amadeus. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy

Tom Hulce, played Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I’d really wanted the part of Younger Brother in Miloš Forman’s previous film Ragtime and had had a couple of disastrous meetings with him. When I met him for Amadeus, he had me read for an entire day against actors coming in for other parts. I noticed he was cursory with people I thought were interesting, and nice to those who I thought didn’t have a chance. I decided strategically to be a real asshole, which seemed to intrigue him. At the end of eight hours, he looked at me and just said: “Yeah. You can go now.”