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.

There is a great tradition of independent filmmaking in the U.S. that I absolutely respect. There's some wonderful stuff that comes out in this country against all the odds.

I grew up looking at... going to the movies a lot, as much as they'd let you. I grew up in Manchester in the north of England in the '40s and '50s. I saw a lot of movies. They were all Hollywood and British movies. I didn't see a film that wasn't in English until I was 17 when I went to London to be a student.

Some of my favorite movies are Hollywood movies. Hollywood is part of the cinematic spectrum. I nurture a healthy love-hate relationship with Hollywood.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience. When you're meeting somebody for the first time, all you have to go on are your preconceptions and your stereotypes and whatever else, but gradually as you get to know them, they change. They become more three-dimensional, and you start to see them in layers.

Because of the way that I work with the actors and because a scene is not in this rigid and literal interpretation of something written, I can constantly change stuff, which means I can get a scene absolutely perfect, and then when we go to shoot it, the requirements of the shot mean it would be useful to extend the dialogue or take a line out or swap things around. So the camera doesn't serve the action. The action serves the camera. That's important. So it becomes more and more organic and integrated.

Some deeply untrusting actors - the kind that need to know exactly what's what and are completely insecure - might be quite good within the parameters of a certain sort of acting.