But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

I think the writer is always the creator, because he's starting with nothing, but the actor comes in and gives flesh and blood.

The Germans were much more graphical. The expressionism is much more than cinema. It was a movement with artists, painters, music and architecture, so it's really graphic and visual. And the French were something else.

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

They said 'if you have a 3D movie, we'll buy it' because they want it. For maybe two weeks I really thought of a silent, black and white 3D movie and I thought it could be great. I imagined it as a very special image, a very new image, but fortunately, I didn't have to do it.

I am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.

Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies