I loved movies and went to see every movie I could in Finland.

A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.

Several times we were stranded in strange places without any money and with our credit cards cancelled - trapped in a hotel that we couldn't check out of because we had no money to check out.

In Hollywood, you tend to get pigeonholed to certain genres, and then when you try to do something different, it's not always so easy. Obviously, you don't want to keep repeating yourself, all the time. So, it's a constant struggle for every filmmaker and actor to find something that you can really feel passionate about. It's a profession like anything else.

I decided that, somehow, I had to get out of there and go to Hollywood. I had never been to America.

Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American.

I loved cutting together simple commercials about margarine or soft drinks - all kinds of silly products - but I tried to make the commercials different.