Law has been through divorce (he separated from Frost in 2003), a new engagement (he fell in love with Sienna Miller on the set of Alfie a year later) and then suffered the consequences of an affair, exposed during the filming of Breaking and Entering. 'There's no regret,' he says carefully, 'you can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things and... you've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good. Because if you regret, in a way, have you learnt and moved on?
'I feel like this,' he continues. 'It all came out and in a way I'd never had an argument, I didn't try to defend myself, I took it on the chin. I was an idiot, I behaved badly. I've also been treated badly; it goes both ways. I made mistakes - who hasn't? I also like to think that because of the scale on which I had to then, um, admit to them, I learnt my lesson and I ain't going to f***ing do it again. I don't ever want to experience that pain, that upset, that confusion, that humiliation ever again. I'm not happy I hurt people, but I'm kind of happy it was on such a public level.