I don't think there's anything on this planet that more trumpets life that the sunflower. For me that's because of the reason behind its name. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it. And that's such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life.

There's nothing sexy about doing a nude scene. It's rather uncomfortable. I like dressing up rather than dressing down.

When I was making films [early in my career] there were very, very few female directors, and there were certainly no women on set, which made taking one's clothes off all the more difficult.

I've not won different awards - many, many times - so luckily I've practiced that whenever you are nominated for anything, you enter into this marvelous, fantabulous bubble called the bubble of nomination. The minute the envelope is opened and your name isn't called out, the bubble bursts. And no one calls you up the next day to say, 'So sorry you didn't win,' or 'You looked gorgeous - nothing. If you win, you get about another 24 hours in that lovely bubble and then - pop - you are slightly wet all over from the bubble and realize that you have to get on with real life.

The great marriages are partnerships. It can't be a great marriage without being a partnership.

What you want is a comfortable environment that you feel you can invent in. Because film is such a lumbering, technical, huge, great Neanderthal thing, it's hard to create that little space of peace, and calm, and creativity, and ease. That's what you want the director to create for you, so that when you walk on the set, you forget all of that, and the fact that it's costing gazillions of dollars a second.

I can't help being Christian because I was brought up in Britain, and the morality of Christianity is part of the fabric of this country.