I feel like the world we live in seems to be full of an increasingly grey area, but the culture that we live in seems to be getting really entrenched in black and white positions, and I think it's urgent to talk about that because it's going to kill us all.

I find that our response to homelessness really puzzlingly. It's a peculiar response that people have.

In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done.

In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

I learned so much about myself from reading this script and doing this movie [Shelter] because the level of judgment and the lack of humanity I saw in myself was disgusting. I never took into account what a homeless person might have been through.

I realized that this story [Shelter] is all about family, family loss, and how it influences you day to day life.

It's weird, because usually if you're British and you go to America you play baddies; but I play naughty people here and goodies in America.