In terms of the stars, the only ones I cast were Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. I was in Los Angeles working and a lot of this took place on the telephone. I'd met Maggie [Smith] once and I'd come back-stage, which I'm usually loathe to do because as an actor you don't want people coming back because you want to get home [laughs].

I'm sixty-eight, I cry every chance I can.

What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.

Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I've never been bored.

There is something unnatural about marriage. These two people are not going to be the same people in a few years. The trick is to live your own life while sharing the same space.

Well, 45-odd years of doing it, so we all pile up the things we like about directors and the things we don't like about directors. And sometimes they're very similar.

You're always in a tunnel that you can't see the end of. But there's something that took place on this movie that I don't think we expected and that was that once we decided that the entire cast would be real retired opera singers and retired musicians... and these people the phone hadn't rung for them for 20 or 40 years even though they can deliver.