Basically, actors arrive in a bubble. They have a little sealed bubble around them and it's basically [comprised of] their agents, their last film, their next film, their press agent, and their per diems - all these things, they cocoon themselves with and you have to puncture that bubble on each of them to make them be in your film.

Everybody knows Aaron Sorkin's scripts. There's a huge amount of lines. There's a huge amount of interchange. You gotta do a lot of learning to be able to get it up to pace.

If I was single and did not have kids, I wonder whether if I would try as hard to be patient, to mind how I react to situations. Not saying people who do not have children don't, but in my life and how I fight against doing the things that have positive impact in my life...I think I would find it easier not to practice the principles did I not have children.

Once, a French journalist told me that all my films are the same. I said, 'Excuse me? I work hard to make them different.' What she meant was that in my films there is a character that faces insurmountable odds, and they overcome them. But I thought that might be true, but you need certain factors for drama, and you need to overcome them.

I was brought up a very strict Catholic and I don't practice anymore or anything.

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

There's lots of things that can be solved with cash. And there's occasional things that can't be solved with cash, which become a bureaucratic nightmare for some reason, and there's no distinction between the two.