You can't give any exciting speech without misremembering things.

On a personal level, I'm proud of Grace Dunham for being so staunchly in her identity. It's a very unusual thing for a young person. I think she's been very strong about it.

In Hollywood, you've got a hundred people on set, and shooting the sex scene you're wearing nude-toned underwear and tape on your nipples. Nothing is going beyond where you want it to go.

The only time I felt like a weird exploiter - even though I knew I wasn't one - was when I was writing a sex scene between me and my adorable co-star [Adam Driver] in which he had to tell me how much he loved my potbelly. It seemed like a weird wish-fulfillment thing, where I'm directing my own fantasy.

I spent all my time on my movies worried that people were eating and that the schedule was being kept, so to have experts in those areas giving me the brain space as a writer and director is huge.

When you're writing a script you have the option to embellish on life or switch the order of events or make it generally more cinematic. I would stick too closely to my own experience and not necessarily think about the fact that it needs to have an event happen. Realising that I could channel my own experience into a story that was slightly more cinematic was a very important moment for me - allowing myself to accept that the kind of screenwriting I'm doing is a work of fiction.

I've never thought of myself as an actor, so somebody recognizing me for that would be a real shock.