My respect for animators and animation directors has gone way, way up and it is just not something you can phone in.

There's so much work in making movies, it's so easy to tear one down. When I watch a movie, even one that I don't particularly enjoy, I'm constantly impressed at the work that's in it. I respect the craftsmen and women. I tolerate a lot of movies that maybe other people don't, just because I know what goes into them.

My agent called and said, 'How do you feel about a pirate movie? I mean, how often are you going to get that call? It's sort of the singularly most failed genre of our time, but I thought it had to be attempted one more time. I think there's something rebellious about pirates, something revolutionary about them. They came out of a time when things were oppressive; you could get hung for stealing a loaf of bread. For me, the Pirates films are about when it's right to break the rules to achieve what you want.

I think my parents gave me a love of learning; from there you set out on your own path.

Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?

I think when you get people who are really talented and you take them out of their comfort zone, you get a lot more out of them.

The curse is an incredible set of blue balls.