The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It's a horrible experience.

I'm very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I'm interested in their lives and their problems.

If you make a film normally it's all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that's a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it's a struggle with them.

I first came to cinema as a passionate filmgoer, when I was a child. Then, when I was a very young man, I became a film critic precisely because of my knowledge of cinema. I did better than others because of this. Then I moved on to screenwriting. I wrote a film with Sergio Leone, 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' And then I moved to directing.

I like films to have something inside, I don't mean a message, I mean something from the soul.

This is my life - I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.