If you're playing someone who's got marital problems, you have to play someone who's trying not to have marital problems. So, you've got to get into the problem first.

There's a paraphrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

I have a great deal of respect for the craft, I don't know how much respect it has for me. But it's a precision process. Doing it on stage would be, I think, terrifying. Doing it on film has its own difficulties, because film is not conducive to spontaneity. You might have a run through and get a few chuckles at eight o'clock in the morning, but you don't keep laughing at the same thing all day long.

I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

Something like Shakespeare in Love, which became such an established hit that it now seems like a foregone conclusion... but it really wasn't. The script was around for a very, very long time and had people chickening out all the time.

So, if you haven't picked up some tips during an apprenticeship like that, you shouldn't be directing. It doesn't mean you can do it, but it loads you up with information.