By the very nature of being a clergyman's son, people tend to put you slightly apart, which is - you tend to live a life, at some stages, as being - people being suspicious of you and puts you rather on a - I don't mean lonely, particularly. But it does tend to put you apart.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

The great joke is that a realist is an optimistic pessimist. That's very witty. Whether it's truthful or not, that I don't know.

The common misconception is that we create films for ourselves. And I really don't do it for myself. I get stopped in the street by people saying, "Do you mind if I say this about your work?" Do I mind? I'm delighted. I do it for you. It's not for me. It's my living, yes, sure.

It's amazing how quickly human beings adapt, isn't it? It was such a great crew, and David [Lynch] was wonderful to work with [on 'The Elephant Man']. It was a very thrilling time, actually.

I left drama school and went straight into a 10-week film for which I was paid £75 I might say, which for 1962 was one heck of a lot of money.

My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.