Cinema has become my life. I dont mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.

The 1980s really ended for me in 1992 with the film Kika.

As a woman, she [Penelope Cruz] obviously has changed as she has become an adult. But, as an actress, I actually might say that she has not changed that much. And she has something great, especially in comedy, and she hasn't been exploited as much as she could be in comedy, but particularly in that mix between comedy and drama. She's got a very special quality about her. You can place her in very extreme situations, especially very painful situations, in terms of how her character interprets it. And sometimes, the deeper and more human that pain is, the better she is at it.

If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them. Maybe they would have been less glamorous than films, but I would continue to tell stories.

I'm really a nightmare for the fashion designer because I take away all of his authority, and I become the authority, and I turn him into my assistant. You could say I intervene, and I intervene in a very determining way in all the aspects that have to do with the visual construction of the film.

All my movies are difficult to classify because they are very eclectic in mixing genres.

When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.