“It made me feel very old, really, because it wasn’t eccentric for its own sake, it was just very original.”

The challenge, really, on any new film is to try to avoid that and achieve a few moments that aren’t cliche.

Especially living in the South of France.

Where you can be in their shoes and therefore be more involved if they’re people that you recognize.

It’s the sort of subject that always interests me: jealousy and the language of suspicion and guilt. I think it interests people.

Always, with any movie that I do, I have a book of ideas that I’ve heard, or seen, or whatever, and I always try to incorporate it in the film.

Well, I think just the fact that you are making your first film is a huge step.

You have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can’t do.

I looked at Brief Encounter very closely, to be honest.

I’ve always been interested in films where you can identify with the actors.

I was watching Monster’s Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It’s just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done.

Their every instinct – and I have to say this is without exception – is to iron out the bumps, and It’s always the bumps that are the most interesting stuff.

Foxes was a movie that didn’t do a lot of business but it didn’t do too badly critically and eventually they offered me other things.

I think that there are points where you become so close to an actor,

The interesting thing was that next I tried a film called Star Man, which Michael Douglas was producing.

Somebody said that I’m a bit like a sponge, grabbing things here and there, soaking stuff up. [As a director] you have to be, really.

The danger is that if you have a bunch of ideas that you forget to use.

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.

I have no shortage of material or offers, it’s just a case of what you select to do. But I think it’s realistic that my chances of playing Romeo are now over.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.

Generally, achieving goals… which in many cases means winning… is really the ultimate in this life we live in.

We rest our case on the production numbers.

Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.

I was a basket case, you know? When I got mad, I threw clubs, you know? And if things weren’t going well.