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 never had any desire to become a well-known actress.

I saw Dolce Vita and my mind was blown by it, by the synthesis. I realised I wanted to be a filmmaker and started making films. I was writing screenplays and couldn't get money because my work was so uncommercial.

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 was always very curious about other people. I would always stare and my mother would say - just please close your mouth!

I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.

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.