No matter how much technique you draw on or how much training you have, acting is a mystery.

Some people come up to be directors by coming through the camera department and there's not a lot of women in the camera department. The ones that are have to kind of prove they're one of the boys, I think. I don't want to get into trouble with generalisations but I think it's a fair observation.

I can actually get involved in getting stories off the ground that no one would ask me to be in because I'm the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong nationality, or whatever. I've found it quite exhilarating to have that freedom to tell the stories that aren't just about middle-aged white English guys.

I never saw myself as Mr. Ugly, but I'm not that handsome. I can sort of be made to look quite a lot better or quite a lot worse.

I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.

It's entirely to do with personality, I think. There are good directors who talk a lot, bad directors who talk a lot, and good directors who don't say much and vice-versa. It just depends on whether people respond to that personality and whether people have a willingness to do something for them.

The failure so far of the governments of so many of the worlds most powerful countries in the face of such egregious unfairness ... to make the slightest progress on the issue of fair trade is hard to explain.