“If you are prepared to make a fool of yourself for them then you usually get that back.”

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.

Obviously, in dealing with a relationship, sexuality has to be involved, and jealousy and emotions like that. And I don’t know, I’ve always been intrigued by those emotions.

I think you get better at staring into space.

And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.

The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance.

When you go to confession and entrust your sins to the safe-keeping of the priest, do you ever come back for them?

When you give, it comes back to you.

That’s one of our biggest challenges is finding out how to do that. There are times when you have to scale back.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

Back in the day, I would wear up to 45 pounds of gold. It would take me four hours to get dressed!

Mr. T. been to chemo, Mr. T been to radiation, hair fall out… but he’s back. Now I can give hope when I go to the hospital, see the sick kids with cancer, tell them, don’t quit.

If you see the President, tell him from me that whatever happens there will be no turning back.