I was known for a while for doing very long takes, especially after Atonement.

I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.

Generally, I've never known quite how to fit in in civilian life, but on set, making a film, I know exactly where to go, how to behave and how I fit.

I was known for a while for doing very long takes, especially after Atonement.

So much of today's film culture, in England and America, is based on lies, really. The industry is very ambitious, and success has become such an opium, people start from the wrong place they forget sometimes that the core of what we do is storytelling. It serves a need, a purpose for the individual and society to pull us together in shared experience and help us realize we're not alone in that experience.

I think that people are still trying to understand each other and overcome prejudices. And people are still, most important, loving each other. And that is today as it was yesterday and will be for another 200 years.

I think people are at their most creative when they're relaxed. I don't believe that tension is good for creativity. Everyone is relaxed and therefore can feel able to express their own individual creativity and lots of ideas come in. It's a joy like that.