My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

I make films because I am endlessly fascinated by people. I'm fascinated immediately to know about the lives that are going on around me. That is what drives me. And that is because everybody matters, everybody is there to be cared about, everybody is interesting and everybody is the potential central character in a story. Judging people is not acceptable.

I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.

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 creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you’re not snooping into somebody else’s lives?

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.