I think the camera has got to be motivated. You can't have things arrived at gratuitously. Everything has to have an organic function, but the more comfortable I've become and the more imaginative and sophisticated and the more exploratory I've become at the medium, the more I've subtly deviated away from that in various ways.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.

One of the reasons the whole Hollywood way of making films wouldn't work for me is because the way I operate would be anathema to anyone who wants to hold a job down in Beverly Hills.

I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.

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.

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.