Need for Speed Dominic Cooper presses the accelerator on his movie career

Dominic Cooper says he was absolutely horrified when filming the movie’s stunts.

Dominic Cooper has been living life in the fast lane of late.

His recent roles have seen him play James Bond creator Ian Fleming during his days as a naval intelligence officer, the spoilt, sadistic son of Saddam Hussein in The Devil’s Double and now a bad boy racer in video game conversion Need for Speed.

In their various ways, all three roles have seen him surrounded by fast cars and racy women. But when he began his acting career his vehicle of choice was more likely to be seen on the hard shoulder.

“My first car was a 1960s Austin Healey,” Dominic laughed when I spoke to him at London’s Corinthia Hotel.

“It had a hole in the fuel tank about a quarter of the way up so I could only put £2 worth of petrol in at any one time. It also had only one working headlight and no windscreen wipers. I used to drive quite long distances, but I don’t know how.”

Slender and youthful for his 35 years, despite the addition of an ageing designer beard since I last met him, Dominic is still of the opinion that it was the best introduction to the roads a teenager can have.

“Everyone’s first car should be like that. I can’t bear it when I see kids getting these amazing first cars you’re meant to have a complete wreck.

“I can understand why parents don’t want their kids driving around in a skip with wheels for safety reasons, but I think you have to have a car that you can beat up so you learn how to respect driving.

“Your first car certainly shouldn’t be able to go very fast.”

Which means he wouldn’t recommend any of the vehicles he was behind the wheel of in Need for Speed.

Dominic is Dino Brewster, a malicious, egotistical racing driver who is the source of the thirst for vengeance that yearns inside Tobey Marshall (Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul) following his part in the death of his friend, Little Pete.

The pair are due to meet in a high stakes, illegal street race known as The De Leon but not if Dino can fix it. As Tobey drives his Shelby Mustang across America to make it to the start line in time, dastardly Dino puts everything in his path to prevent him arriving in one piece.

Avoiding the obstacles (Tobey has a glamorous co-driver along for the ride, played by British actress Imogen Poots) called for some incredible stunts and some very nervy actors.

To make it look like Dominic and Aaron were really driving, director Scott Waugh (a former stuntman) rigged up a special car so that they could sit in the driver’s seat while it was travelling at high speed but was actually being controlled by a stunt driver sitting above them.

“If you like being in control it’s absolutely horrifying,” recounted Dominic, still reeling from the experience. You’re going along at 180mph, but you have absolutely no control.

“I kept pressing the brake, desperately hoping it would reduce the speed in some way but it wasn’t even connected. The guys were all ex-pro racing drivers, but to have a steering wheel that doesn’t respond and pedals that don’t work took some getting used to.

“Just as I was overcoming that, they covered the windscreen for lighting purposes, so you speed along at 180mph and there’s a white polystyrene board over the windscreen so you can’t even see where you’re going.”

A central theme of the film is what lengths people driven by revenge will go to but Dominic, whose ex-girlfriend Amanda Seyfried never misses an opportunity to mention her broken heart in interviews, reckons it’s an unrewarding business.

“It’s not a satisfying thing. It’s funny because it always works in film but forgiveness is something which seems to play a much bigger part in people being able to move on with their lives in terms of something terrible happening to them, I think,” Dominic says.

“Revenge doesn’t make you feel better, an eye for an eye and all that, it doesn’t do anything. It’s not going to bring anybody back.”

Need for Speed is at cinemas from Wednesday.