In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.

I realized you can always make money; you just do a lot of things.

It's hard when your first thing is something everyone loves. Actually, that never happened to me. I was lucky that my first film, which is actually the best reviewed of all my films, didn't have that success.

People make films about all kinds of relationships, but they won't do these extremely intense platonic love affairs that happen between young girls. In a way they are more intense than anything else you ever have, and that's what I wanted to make a film about, though it was in the context of a horror film.

It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me.

There was a lot of anger among critics that I had not made a sexy movie.

I just don't think I'm an ideological filmmaker in any way. I don't know how anyone could see anything I've done and see that.