When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.

The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.

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.

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.

My job apart from anything else is to build an ensemble composed of actors who all come from a secure place so that they can all work together to make the film.

If I'm ever working on a set and anyone talks about a master shot, I say there is no master shot. Before I even went to film school, I learned about movies by being in a British feature film, where everything was shot master shot, mid-shot, close-up. But I reject the idea of a master shot. You don't shoot everything mechanically; you find imaginative ways that serve the action.

When it comes to thinking about how a character talks, there are literary and language considerations. For actors to be able to differentiate between themselves and the characters they are playing while at the same time remain in character and spontaneous requires a sophisticated combination of skills and spirit.