All we try and do is make the best films we can. If you do that then hopefully the audiences will come, and they have. Everything else is gravy.

The truth is, it's very hard looking back... we look at holocaust now with such knowledge and such a sense of the horror of what it was, that it's hard to believe even now that in 1930s and 1940s, before something like this had happened, that it could be impossible to imagine the extent of this horror.

The most important thing is that you have to have the visual effects working for you, instead of you working for the visual effects.

I look forward to having the time and the opportunity to take on new challenges, but I'm also aware that I've loved every minute of the 'Potter 'experience: to make films for an enthusiastic audience and work with great material.

I like stories that begin with characters. I like to be engaged and moved by the characters in the story. I want to be moved. I want to leave the cinema and think about what I've seen. My sensibility is quite eclectic and it doesn't matter if they are small or large films, I just want to make good films.

In some ways, many of the skills you have as a producer on independent films also apply to making big tentpole films: You surround yourself with a brilliant director, great script and talented people in every department who are smarter than you.

I don't think you can be a director without a kind of sense of competitiveness.