After studying in Sheffield, I went down to London to do my post-graduate degree at the National Film and Television School, embarking on the movie that would eventually become 'A Grand Day Out.

If you respect the audience enough, they can take onboard many things.

I always considered Ray Harryhausen's work so fine that it was way out of my league: in terms of realism and naturalism, in terms of animal movement.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.

We have to look forward and keep filming new films and not get stuck in the past.

When I was a teenager, my dad watched my films and told me I could go to art college and study animation. He made me see that I could do this for a living.