You can do anything you like - really - but this Sci-Fi is absolutely disciplined, it's Zen, you have to be absolutely focused in an area. You have to zone into an area and you then you can achieve when you get there. It's really weird!

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.

I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days.

A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit.

I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.

Actors want to impress at the beginning, so you take advantage of that by suddenly saying, 'Right, you're here for two weeks.' What you're doing is creating a siege mentality.

I don't want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them.