Writers and filmmakers have this age-old relationship to the material.

As you get older and more successful, you don't get magnetically drawn to aristocracy, you get magnetically drawn to power, and it gets magnetically drawn to you. It's a symbiosis whether you like it or not.

As I found out making this last movie ["Method"], if you ever do things in an unusual, different way, you got to fight because there's no way people will let you.

Whether it's Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde, they're brilliant with genius bon mots. Of course, I find them extraordinary.

I'm part of an industry that everybody wants to be a part of. I do hang out with a lot of sort of powerful, interesting people like Bella Freud or Jay Joplin or Tracey Emin. I'm part of that group of people. Brit artists who are doing things. That's what I do. Some of them happen to be aristocrats.

I did make some money, the first money that I ever made, doing this last one, and it's an extraordinary feeling just being given the freedom to do something.

Writers and filmmakers have this age-old relationship to the material.