When you have children your own hypocrisy becomes more apparent because you're telling them how to behave, and you're not behaving like that yourself. So it obliges one to really go in and try to look at why there is a huge gulf between how one knows one wants to behave and how one actually does behave.

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

I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose - although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope.

The sun is the most important thing in everybody's life, whether you're a plant, an animal or a fish, and we take it for granted.

I tend to score with songs from Western pop music.

Both of my sisters have been teachers and they used to say you get asked between 300 and 600 questions every day which you have to answer. That's exactly what directing is. And the vast majority of those questions are not very interesting really, but they need somebody to make a decision - a good one or a bad one - and they follow it.

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.