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.

I can't really see how anybody could be particularly optimistic about the future in general because we are destroying the planet.

I know, that trends and all of those things and formulae that calculate what audiences want to see and what audiences don't want to see and various other demographic demarcations are the eccentric and ludicrous prerogative of Hollywood studios. But out there in the real world - by which I mean the rest of the world where we make truthful organic films, independent films unimpeded by interference - it's not about all those sort of calculating what is commercial. It's about wanting to say things and saying them in a way that will get through to people.

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.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

I can't negotiate and collaborate with a character to create a distilled dramatic investigation of the raw material. I need to work with an actor. That stuff about actors who stay in character all the time is nonsense.

I hate period films - and there are plenty of them - where they say, "Let's not do contemporary language because the audience won't understand it;" "let's not make the girls wear corsets, because it's not sexy" and all that sort of thing. Gradually it disintegrates into a no man's land: you don't really believe it's a period scene and it doesn't feel like it's now because it's not now. You don't feel it's quite real and you don't believe in it.