I've always been monogamous - [within it] I've been in love with people, but very platonically. For me, monogamous love is about learning how to be able to trust someone completely; so you need to be able to think you can trust them. But that doesn't mean you can't have extraordinary feelings for other people and not feel guilty about them, but not necessarily go and wreck marriages and consummate, and you don't have to do all that.

When I moved to Paris in the '70s, there wasn't very much going on in film in England. So when I started doing French films, there was a natural movement toward the kind of films I wanted to do. It wasn't the reason I came, but it so happened that I stepped into a time and place that actually corresponded to what I wanted. That sometimes happens in life. And it was rather beautiful.

A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin

You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.

I know a lot about fear in itself, and lived with fear a lot. Lived with anxiety a lot, lived with the things that - most human beings, at some stage in their lives, are going to live with these feelings.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films

You can never really judge your work because once it's done, it's done.