I spend a lot of my time just developing material; or the company does. That material can come from a book, can come from a newspaper, can come from a discussion and sometimes it can come from a script that got passed over and is floating around.

Yes, obviously, there's this degree of wanting people to accept other people faiths and philosophies.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

It goes back a long way. I wanted to make Tristan + Isolde as my second movie. My first movie was The Duellists. And I was standing in a very romantic part of France looking around me thinking, "My God, this would be perfect for Tristan," and to cut a long story short it never happened because I did Alien instead.

Well, not totally because over the years I've probably done 2,700 commercials. So, I'm always ticking. And in a way that was a huge advantage because I was able to take my time choosing my film subjects because I wasn't relying on the fear of not being able to work.

I think moviemakers are dramatists.

I was a very earnest, hard working boy at school, but my parents were distressed because I was always bottom of the class. But I wasn't dilatory, I worked like crazy.