If there's one thing the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards committee got right this year, it's Paul Dano's Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in epic historical drama, There Will Be Blood.

Overlooked at both the Oscars and Golden Globes, Dano has been rather lost in the rush to praise his on-screen rival Daniel Day-Lewis. It's not the first time either that he has been ignored in favour of another: best known for playing a mute, Nietzsche-loving teenager in Little Miss Sunshine, it was his co-star Alan Arkin who walked away with an Academy Award last year.

Not that this self-contained 23-year-old cares one iota about trinkets for the mantelpiece. A brief glance at his CV - from Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation to James Marsh's The King - shows that he is more interested in forging an interesting, diverse career than anything else.

"I certainly am quite conscious of the choices I make now," he admits, his voice rasping from a recent cold. "I'm not sure what the criterion is. It changes day to day. But I'm certainly trying to stick to my guns and do what I feel that I need. I set my own pace rather than getting caught up in any silliness."

Fortunately, There Will Be Blood - directed by Boogie Nights and Magnolia's Paul Thomas Anderson - is a masterpiece and the eight Oscar nominations it received are entirely justified. Its themes are timeless - "capitalism, religion, power, greed" is how Dano describes it - and if Day-Lewis wins Best Actor at the Oscars next month for his role as Texan prospector Daniel Plainview, his co-star will surely figure in his acceptance speech. Cast as Eli Sunday, a self-styled preacher who becomes Plainview's nemesis as the film unfolds, Dano's scenes with Day-Lewis are among the most exciting.

"What was fun about a lot of those scenes was that you really can't rehearse them," says Dano. "You can't really prepare for what it's going to feel like to have a bowling ball flying at you!"

One wonders if he was aware of just how much electricity he was generating. "Yeah, I did feel that way. I felt a hell of a thrill doing the sermon scenes - having a congregation in the palm of your hands is like a rock show. You feel this rush, there's a live audience it was definitely very thrilling."

As was working with the legendary Day-Lewis for a second time, after 2005's The Ballad Of Jack And Rose, which was directed by Day-Lewis's wife Rebecca Miller.

"I think there's a slight misunderstanding about the way Daniel works," says Dano. "A lot of people think it's abnormal to be so committed. But when you see it in person, it makes perfect sense. First of all, he's just trying to do what he needs to do to be the best he can be. And most people don't have the willpower and perseverance to do that. It requires a great amount of commitment to do that. It makes a lot of sense. It almost seems like that's the way it should be done."

As focused in his own way as his co-star, Dano began his career in the theatre. Born in Connecticut, the son of a businessman, he worked in off-Broadway shows in his early teens instead of going to drama school. "I think that was my training in a way," he muses.

Film seemed like a distant dream until, aged 16, he scored the lead in L.I.E. opposite Brian Cox. A disturbing coming-of-age drama, it certainly set the tone for the sort of projects Dano would ultimately be attracted to. Still, Dano is not so short-sighted as to turn down new experiences. While studying literature at The New School university in Manhattan, he began to experiment with the odd mainstream movie - The Emperor's Club, with Kevin Kline, and the modest teen movie The Girl Next Door - if only to prove to himself that they weren't for him.

Still based in Manhattan, Dano has absolutely no intentions of heading to LA. "As long as I can do what I do from here, I don't think I'd do that," he says. And, while he has voiced a character in Spike Jonze's upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak's children's book Where The Wild Things Are, Dano is evidently a little wary of Hollywood. "The business can be discouraging sometimes, in terms of the way things work," he sighs. How so? "It's such a tricky one to answer without sounding like an asshole." Which is one thing Paul Dano is not.

There Will Be Blood opens on February 15; a special preview at the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh on February 11 will be followed by a live question-and-answer session with Daniel Day-Lewis, broadcast from London.