If the American taxpayer knew how much they paid per person to put Neil Armstrong on the moon they would never have paid it. It was hidden from them deliberately because the costs were astronomical.

I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar.

Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

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

If you approach India in the right way, you have so much to learn there about people, and there's so many people. It's such an extraordinary setup, and it's so bewildering how it manages to get through somehow, you can only wonder at it.

We're trying to learn from [Olympic] Beijing, which could be very intimidating. We've learned to expect it's power, it majesty and that it completes a cycle of certain types of shows... I don't think any nation could do anything on that scale. We haven't got that money, and I don't think anybody would have the appetite for that kind of expenditure and that kind of control, so we're going to try and do something a bit more intimate and try and start again... start a new cycle for these kind of ceremonies.

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.