I think a big part of my job is to make an atmosphere on set and have an attitude that it's about experimentation, and you can't do anything wrong. It's not about judgment, it's not about me kicking over a chair and storming onto set and acting stuff out and telling people to copy what I do. That is a style of directing some people have, but I don't understand it.

If I'd been offered 'Spider-Man,' I probably would have done it. I don't think it's bad to go and do those things.

I think CGI is interesting but it's too expensive and limiting in terms of what you can do shot-by-shot.

You can muscle your way to the top as long as you're part of the production, which I am. I'm knitted into the money, so it's very hard to extricate me from the decision-making dynamic.

I'm very superstitious about going on other people's sets. You have to ask permission of the director; you shouldn't just turn up and skulk about in the background. It's very rude. You have to ask them personally. It's like a vampire being invited into a house.

I've had pretty much the same crew for all the films that I've made, and I've managed to have really nice, calm, funny people. That is a big part of it, a family feeling of warmth and finding something interesting and making a platform for them to perform. It's a very difficult job, acting, in that it's totally counterintuitive to how we are brought up.

Society is about masks and hiding and pretending to be something that you're not and not opening up, and in acting, you do all of those things, but it also shows the performers in a very raw state. They have to literally upset themselves to get to that position sometimes. You don't need a load of people judging you or not being interested in what you're doing or being an ass on set because it ruins it.