I think probably winning these things [an Oscar] can be a bit of a curse depending on who you are and how you think. But I haven't been on a journey to get anywhere in particular, so that hasn't changed. And my criteria for choosing projects hasn't changed.

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.

I do tend to move on anyway. This is a part of my life, but it doesn't rule my life.

Well, I've never looked upon myself as being a beauty, per se.

Audiences want to see them, and in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

I remember when I was 26. My father died when I was young and my mother didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, 'I want to own a flat by the time I'm 26.' So I worked towards that, literally trying to scrimp and save. But sometimes those plans don't go as you expect.

Culture civilizes us, and that's why every single despotic regime has tried to smash [the arts].