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

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.

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

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.

I didn’t get involved in it; I started what then became a movement.

I have been fully involved in designing my stage shows; it’s important to me to do something really unique and almost off-the-wall to bring the music and the visuals together.

They are all different, in terms of history, and the religious compositions of the populations involved.

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

I sense a real difference in my work from the time I was younger and single and more involved in the world of music and going out to bars and all that.

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.

Flying and swimming is not a coincidence rather it is an illustration of the fact that a universal principle is involved.

We know that Russia was involved in hacking our democracy.