For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.

Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.

I don't know what the character is going to be. We sit down and we create a character, and all of the characters in all of my films are made like that.

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically. Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.

If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.

The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.

I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.