The script is the musical score, and everyone has to play off that score. Even I have to interpret it. The producers are there to eliminate obstacles to that interpretation.

Looking at paintings was a huge part of finding my way into the lush world of the 18th century.

In a way, after you're done directing there is a sense of amnesia that washes over you, you can't exactly remember how you did things. It's a zone, just like an athlete, when they can't remember what they did, but somehow got it done.

One of the things that's good for me is that I can go from one art form to another.

I was trained to look at colour, edges, to see negative space. I honestly think my greatest influence as a writer is from Cubism - the idea of a multi-faceted, multi-perspective way of looking at things.

I am half-Jewish, and yet really hadn't been brought up within the Jewish faith. So I had felt culturally Jewish, if that's possible, without really understanding it.

I've always been fascinated by the way that children and animals suffer stoically in a way that I don't think adults do.