A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.

Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

Just in relation to women, it's not that huge an imaginative leap to see the connection between the Taliban and the Catholic Church.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.