John Cusack clearly doesn't want to be here. Back on the treadmill to promote his latest film, Identity, one of four slated for release this year; everything from his shlumpy posture to his tiny tiny for-dogs-ears-only voice is screaming 'get me out of here'. Or at least whispering it.

Add in an unhealthy dose of chronic monosyllaby and it's obvious we're looking at one very unhappy film star here. Which is at complete odds to the man portrayed by those he can actually stand being in the same room with. "I think there's something funny and charming and everyman about John," says Identity director James Mangold, adding, "he's someone who carries with him a kind of natural likeable personal aura." "A really great guy," reckons co-star Ray Liotta.

Cusack's reticence in the face of press intrusion shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Despite being linked to classic paparazzi bait like Minnie Driver, Neve Campbell and more recently Meg Ryan - the latter of which he resolutely denies having a relationship with - thirty-seven-year-old Cusack has always appeared more of an actor than a celebrity, wisely using his status to garner good film roles rather than tabloid headlines. Ask him why he won't play ball with the popular media and he simply says "What's in it for me?" So one could conclude that he believes far too much is made of the 'star' aspect of movie making.

"Of course," he says.

And?

"They're just movies. But now it's a weird time because you get into a film and then the studios try to wrap up the marketplace by getting all this press so they can blow a movie down everyone's throats."

The movie about to rattle everyone's epiglottis is the horror/mystery/supernatural thriller Identity, which finds ten strangers brought together in a remote motel, fighting for their lives during a relentless rainstorm. Also starring Rebecca DeMornay and Amanda Peet, it was Liotta's inclusion in the film that helped seal the deal.

"I'm a huge fan of his. I think Goodfellas is almost a perfect performance. Very underrated. And he's really sweet; but don't tell anybody."

Identity may not be Cusack's first thriller, but it's certainly his first venture into the world of Horror. Is he a fan of the genre?

"Sometimes I am."

OK. Anything in particular?

"Shining's a great film. Exorcist is a great film. Night of the Living Dead is a great film. So this is kind of an in-between psychological thriller and a bit of a horror movie. I thought it was one of those Agatha Christie/Hitchcock kind of things. And I didn't see the twists and turns coming when I read it; as a read it was really good. I'd think, right, I've got these guys figured out, I know where they're going. Then I'd get surprised. Then I'd get surprised again."

What perhaps is no surprise is that Cusack would take on a genre he's not previously explored. Diversity has been key to his career, and it's seen him slide gracefully from romantic comedy (Serendipity, America's Sweethearts) to cool comedy (High Fidelity, Pushing Tin, Shadows and Fog, Bullets over Broadway) and dark comedy (Being John Malkovich, Grosse Pointe Blank), via blockbuster action (Con Air) and drama (Cradle Will Rock, The Thin Red Line). All this from a start in teen-flicks like Class, Sixteen Candles and Cameron Crowe's directorial debut Say Anything.

Any character he's played vaguely close to the real John Cusack?

"I don't know."

Oh.

"Well, I actually did this character in Max that I felt was pretty similar to me."

Max is the story of an art teacher in Germany in the aftermath of World War I, and the film depicts his relationship with an aspiring young painter by the name of Adolf Hitler. Cusack plays Max, and raising the subject of the movie is enough to raise Cusack's voice from a whisper to; well, not quite a scream, but a level that at least can be heard over a squeaking chair.

"I agree with his views on art and politics and war. I think everything he says in the movie about those subjects is true. Hitler became a dictator because he recognised his only original idea, his only genius; that in the modern world art and politics were going to be fused into one entity. That the aesthetics of art in the modern world has power. In the film you have two characters; one that's using art to deconstruct the world, and Hitler who was using it to reconstruct the world."

Max is precisely the type of project to keep Cusack interested in making movies, the star going as far as to say that if he could make similarly weighty films consistently "I could walk away from doing big studio movies". So no more Con Air's then?

"No. I liked all the people I worked with on it but those kind of movies aren't as fun to act in. They're not as satisfying as some of the other things I get to do."

One of the more satisfying things that Cusack got to do was form his own production company in the late eighties, New Crime Productions, already responsible for getting Grosse Point Blank, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, High Fidelity and now Identity into your local multiplex. New Crime's next project is an adaptation of Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe, a satire based on the premise that the success of the author's first novel has catapulted him to intergalactic stardom. Cusack wrote the screenplay with the author.

"We finished that and we're trying to get the money for it, and I'm trying to write myself into it. I'm trying to be selfish."

Thankfully for Cusack, he's in a position where he can be exactly that. With, of course, the odd nod to the mechanisations of his chosen industry.

"When it comes to things like premiers, you just go do it," he says wearily. "Sometimes it can be a rush but it's not anything I look forward to."

So outside of filmmaking, what does he look forward to?

"I like to travel around and I like to kickbox; I do it three or four times a week. It keeps me fit and gets out some aggression."

Not that he's planning to combine his martial arts skills with a movie project any time soon.

"The problem is, I like doing action stuff but on most action movies the scripts are so bad. It'll be fun to do physical stuff, but I can't find a good movie. If I found one I liked I'd do it in a second."

So you can look after yourself then?

"If you do martial arts you don't emanate fear so you don't attract fear, and therefore you don't get in those situations. A lot of times fear attracts fear. "

But in a showdown with Liotta, who'd win?

"Ray for sure. He too tough, too scary. He's Ray."