Hugh Dancy

When she tries to explain how she feels knowing Hugh Dancy is The One, she says "I can apply myself in other ways now. I have more time and energy to get sh-t done. "

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"It's interesting seeing Hugh since the film, he's a different person and I've since realised how much he did isolate himself, whether it was consciously or not," she says.

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"It was one of the most intriguing scripts I'd seen in some time," said Byrne during a recent joint interview with Dancy in Chicago. Though the actress had known a family friend with Asperger's -- "and so was a bit aware of what it was all about" -- Dancy said he didn't know anything about the condition before an agent handed him the "Adam"

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"There's a saying within the Asperger community: if you've met one person with Asperger's syndrome, you've met one person with Asperger's syndrome," said Dancy during a Seattle visit. "Within this condition, beneath this label, the variety of personality, of humor, of behavior, is infinite." "That was the most profound thing we learned in the meetings," said Mayer, who wrote and directed the film and accompanied Dancy. "I think that freed him to create a character and take it to a deeper level."

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"I almost tried to find reasons not to do it and they would all evaporate, they weren't good enough," said Hugh. He added: "Eventually I had a meeting with Max, who wrote and directed the movie, and I had a few flimsy questions about the script which was my excuse for meeting - and he batted those away very quickly."

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"That's terrible. I sound terrible," she said. Her husband Hugh Dancy added, "Basically, you're speaking to the most politely pro-Manhattanite person that you've ever met, right here."

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"Confessions of a Shopaholic," "Evening" (alongside now-fiancee Claire Danes), HBO miniseries "Elizabeth I" and "King Arthur," started from a place of total ignorance about Asperger's. "The broad outline of what you do would be the same for anybody -- you go on the Internet, you lose yourself in Google for days, you read whatever you can get your hands on," Dancy said, as he worked his way toward speaking with experts and those with Asperger's.

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"They've all been really embracing of the film," says Byrne of the Aspies she's met at publicity tour screenings. "And they'd really tell you if they didn't like it," she adds with a gentle laugh. Dancy believes much of the enthusiastic feedback comes from "just the fact of being recognized and being represented in a way that doesn't patronize them."

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"What they're responding to as a group, as a community, is actually our attempt not to represent a whole community but represent an individual," Dancy says. "The response to the movie is almost out of proportion. "What they're responding to is their entire lives."

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"So I tried to keep that somewhat genuine." Dancy recounts a moment at the previous night's screening when a woman who identified herself as having Asperger's stood to ask a question about how he prepared for his role. "So I gave my answer," Dancy says. "And the woman next to her said, 'Could you repeat everything you said but for Aspies, because I didn't understand a word you said. You were talking NT, all those adjectives."

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