The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.

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 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.

The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.

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 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.

The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.