Where you grew up becomes a big part of who you are for the rest of your life. You can't run away from that. Well, sometimes the running away from it is what makes you who you are.

My fear of drama school is that the natural extraordinary but eccentric talent sometimes can't find its place in a drama school. And often that's the greatest talent. And it very much depends on the drama school and how it's run and the teachers. It's a different thing here in America as well because so many of your great actors go to class, which is sort of we don't do in England.

Once a film gets into production, the actors sometimes begin to have more input than a writer does.

Film is a visceral experience so I think a good war movie is a valuable tool for making us understand what our military goes through, what the issues are, the good and bad sides of war and what we're asking our military to do.

I don't like the word 'strong,' because a strong character is never an interesting character. A character is made interesting by their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses.

The most difficult thing about shooting guns instantly on film is to not pull a silly face while the gun is going off, because it's always a bit of a shock. So you find yourself sticking your tongue out or blinking or whatever. So the hardest thing is to keep a straight face while you're shooting a gun.

Ill-informed intuition is fantastic - it's what great art is. So really old painters or writers or actors are brilliant, because they've finally reached the point when they can let go of al technique.