It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.

I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.

I don't think we have enough imaginary creatures in cinema. It seems like we're stuck with zombies, vampires, and werewolves. We should have everything. We should have minotaurs. We should have elves. We should have mermen in popular culture. But instead we've stuck with vampires.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.

You've got to play what people think you are, rather than what you are. You have to have a sense of what you are as you're playing what people think you are.