Well, Brief Encounter is certainly one of my top five favorites of all time. I looked at Brief Encounter very closely, to be honest.

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

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

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

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.

What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.

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.