Mother’s Day may be a bit off on the calendar, but it’s presently a particularly maternal time for Emily Mortimer. She just had a baby, her second, with husband Alessandro Nivola, and our conversation occurs with lamb curry in the pot and her own mother set to arrive shortly from England for a visit. More darkly, onscreen, in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Mortimer plays Rachel Solando, a mother held at a remote asylum for the criminally insane after killing her three children. When Rachel goes mysteriously missing, Leonardo DiCaprio’s federal marshal is called in to investigate. I caught up with Mortimer recently to talk about the joys of both motherhood and fake blood, the zen tranquility of a Scorsese set, and her scotched plans to play Alfred Hitchcock’s wife. For the Q&A, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.