“The genre has got quite serious now.”

If somebody knew every time they did something it was going to be a hit there would never be any failures.

Sadly, that’s not how it works. You take nothing for granted.

Sometimes our motivations can be quite hazy, contradictory and multi-faceted, in real life.

We’re all waiting for the opportunity to do big films but you have to wait your turn – unless you get offered something like Twilight when you’re 20! Otherwise, you just have to keep slogging away.

If someone offers you a three picture deal at 20 you’d take it. I would have killed for it.

Long gone are the days of the stylised old James Bond films with Roger Moore karate chopping his way through the bad guys – audiences are not going to buy it anymore.

I’m kind of glad that I was able to properly grow up before becoming a massive movie star.

The authors I prefer are all very different and are not limited to certain genres or even certain time periods.

What I had to say was, in general, I’m not really a fan of any one genre of any kind of film.

There are only a few genres, horror and comedy, where you can get that immediate feedback from the audience.

Whether it’s in a phrase like “going over like a lead balloon” or “a needle in a haystack,” or tackling movie myths or even a genre, like MacGyver or James Bond

A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migrant workers in Europe.

Each genre has its own process. I’m very intuitive about poetry. I usually write first and second drafts out by hand. The other end of the spectrum is journalism, which is much more cerebral, more thought-out and planned.

Literary genres and techniques tend to take form in one’s mind somewhat the way computer templates provide form for different computer tasks.

A few guys will get up there with turntables as purists, to play vinyl or whatever.