My definition of success is control.

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

I looked at the 1950 animated film [Cinderella], I read a couple of editions of the fairy tale that I have in my house and all of it seemed to say that there was room for a version that delivered, in this story, which seems to invite a feeling in people and I think that is some version of a classical world.

There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.

I only really cast people who are desperate to be in it - who were dying to be in it, whose talent I believed in and were dead ready to do the work that was necessary.

After Frankenstein, I feel as if I want to make a film about somebody having a nice cup of tea.

Don’t stand up when you can sit down and don’t sit down when you can lie down.