Every milieu has something ridiculous about it - film-making, the music world, painting - because people who take themselves seriously become funny pretty quickly.

I'm really interested in the minutiae of different tones and what that explains - how people's backgrounds are reflected in minute details of how they interact. It's true that I'm hypersensitive to all that. Writing is acting in the sense that you're imagining and inhabiting another. In the book I was trying to get at the root of what true acting is.

I have a great drive to make things and sometimes I forget to slow down a little.

You work with each individual actor as you perceive their needs to be. It's something that you've figured out in the weeks of pre-production.

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.

That's one thing I find about having children - it does unlock a door that separates you from other women who've had children.

There is a magic thing called 'tone' in a film, that the director must master and maintain.