I place an enormous premium on loyalty. If someone betrays me, I can forgive them rationally, but emotionally I have found it impossible to do so.

Time and time again I was told that I would never make the film on time and never make it on budget. That kind of criticism tends to turn me into a great big motor of efficiency.

When I meet a couple, I'm always interested to know if they have been together for a long time, or how loyal they are, because I know that will impact on how much I'm prepared to trust them.

I would love to play your common, everyday guy, but I never get cast as that.

It always depresses me when people moan about how commercial Christmas is. I love everything about it. The tradition of having this great big feast, slap bang in the middle of winter, is an essential thing to look forward to at the end of the year.

The fashion world is much more ephemeral than the film industry and moves at a faster pace, and it's got even more frenetic since the Nineties; more paparazzi hanging about and it seems to me there are even more fashion magazines.

When I came to England, the first director I met was Charles Sturridge, who told me, 'You speak like somebody out of the 1950s.