To force yourself out of the comfort zone, the main ingredient is trying to work in a world where you haven't been before, that you don't know the rules of. And that involves a lot of research, so you begin to see where the other people have been, but you are starting from as vulnerable and as low a point as possible.

Come a crisis, we want other people.

I say to first time filmmakers that when they're asked, they should go to America as you're far more likely to get a chance.

I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes. I love taking a bunch of characters and it usually is a bunch of characters, and you throw something at them that's usually extreme, like a bag of money, or you send them out to explode a nuclear device on the surface of the sun. And those extremes are wonderful for drama.

Normally, I'm a very controlling director. Directors are controlling. It's part of the job, but there's various degrees of it and the constructs I normally work on are very controlling constructs.

It just seduces you when you read a story and your brain relates to it. You recognize or connect with it. You identify with it; you're bound to.

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.