AS anyone familiar with her work will know, Emily Watson, soon to appear in the new family drama The Book Thief, has a quiet, composed bearing about her.

But ask if she remembers becoming one of the first winners of a Herald Angel award 18 years ago and all reserve goes way out of the window.

"I was, and I still have it!" says Watson, as she recalls going to the Edinburgh Film Festival with Breaking the Waves, the Lars von Trier drama that went on to earn her an Oscar nomination. "It's on a shelf in my study at home. It was my first ever statuette."

The nominations and awards have continued - notably an Oscar nod for portraying the cellist Jacqueline du Pre in Hilary and Jackie, and a Bafta for playing the social worker assigned to Fred West in Appropriate Adult. With two children now, Watson's life has changed in other ways. What hasn't changed is her ability to spot a moving story, and in The Book Thief, she found one.

Adapted from Marcus Zusak's eight million selling novel, The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel, a young German girl who is sent to live with foster parents (played by Watson and Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech) as the Second World War is about to begin. Though the new little family try to distance themselves from the brutal madness around them, life-changing choices must soon be made.

Liesel is played by Sophie Nelisse, a 13-year-old Canadian. Watson is used to working with younger actors - her next film after The Book Thief is Little Boy, another war drama - and in Nelisse she found a fellow pro.

"She's very sophisticated. She trained as a gymnast from the age of four and she was in the Canadian national gym team so she was very used to performing and being in the public eye. She had the choice between going to train to go to the Rio Olympics or doing this movie and she chose to do the movie."

For all the cast and crew, some of the scenes filmed in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany were to prove disturbing.

Since Nazi symbols are banned in the country the production had to ask for special permission to use banners and uniforms. The effect was unforgettable, says Brian Percival, the film's director, especially on the largely German crew.

"The whole history of the place is very tangible and that created an atmosphere around the film," says Percival. "Because we had a German crew and German actors there were certain scenes which were emotional. One scene in particular, the book burning, I remember looking around and there was a few German crew members who had tears rolling down their cheeks."

Watson, 47, found Berlin a fascinating place in which to live and work. "In a way Berlin wears its history on its sleeve in an incredibly honest way, it will never allow itself to forget what happened there."

I speak to Percival and Watson just days after the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, with whom Watson starred in Synecdoche New York, the 2008 drama written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.

"Although I wasn't close with him and hadn't spoken to him in a long time I felt bereft," she says. "I'm sure there are hundreds of actors who feel the same way; he worked with a lot of people.

"For everybody working with him was the highest pinnacle of what it can be to be an actor."

For Watson and Rush, The Book Thief was a chance to play husband and wife again after 2003's The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Between this, Hilary and Jackie, Appropriate Adult, and Oranges and Sunshine, the acclaimed drama about social worker Margaret Humphreys and her role in helping British children "stolen" from parents in Britain and sent to Australia, Watson has never shied from parts that require her to walk around in another's shoes, distressing as that can sometimes be. Appropriate Adult, in which Dominic West played the British serial murderer, was one such role. By the end of it, she could not wait to get away.

"It was very hard subject matter because you have to employ your imagination. At a certain stage your imagination shudders to a halt and it can't go any further because it is too awful."

Watson knows the north of Scotland fairly well, having spent time there filming Breaking the Waves. "It was one of the best experiences I've ever had. I loved every minute of it." The awards-filled aftermath was "a whirlwind ride, I was a little bit rabbit blinking in the headlights".

Of working with von Trier, she says: "It was an amazing thing to do. It was transforming as an actor, I had never experienced what it was to do something so total, to be so committed to something like that. And I was surrounded by wonderful actors and an amazing director, it was just a very fulfilling experience."

Those where the days when von Trier was known for being a filmmaker whose work generated prizes and started discussions. Today, he is more likely to spark headlines and outrage. Was he a different man then?

"I don't really know what he is like now but he has a reputation that's probably half to do with him and half to do with the people who've put it about. I had a very good experience with him, I really enjoyed working with him."

Breaking the Waves, the story of a young Scotswoman (Watson) who falls in love with a Dane working on the rigs, was a dream launch to a film career. Not only did it bring Watson exposure on the festival circuit, it introduced her to a different way of working fro what she had experienced in drama school. As a primer in the type of films she wanted to make, it was ideal.

"It was kind of atypical in a way, it wasn't so much a conventional, commercial film. But it was a great experience in terms of the way we shot it because it was all hand-held camera and we didn't have to be aware of anything technical, we just shot and shot and shot."

With Breaking the Waves behind her, the London-born Watson could have gone to America and stayed. While she has worked there over the years, starring in such films as Punch-Drunk Love, the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed comedy drama with Adam Sandler, and Red Dragon, with Anthony Hopkins, she always came home to the UK again. After Little Boy, which shot in Mexico, she was as keen as ever to get home to her two children and writer husband in London.

Sometimes, the big American blockbusters come to you, as with Spielberg's War Horse, in which Watson was again playing a wife, this time to Scotland's Peter Mullan. Otherwise, Watson takes each offer as it comes.

"For the right project I will go away for a bit but it has to take an awful lot, just because it's a massive upheaval with the children."

The Book Thief opens on February 26.