I worked hard, but I was lucky the right people happened to see my work.

Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.

Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.

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

3D doesn't work quite so well with quick cuts and I probably would have done some longer takes had I really taken that information onboard.

I went to comprehensive school in North London and left without any qualifications [diploma]. And I was doing bits of acting and improv in a drama club in the evenings. Then I discovered you didn't need qualifications to go to art school, you just needed a body of work.

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