I went to Art College and during the summer I made a movie with my brother. I got hold of a little camera, wrote a script and dragged my brother, Tony, out of bed to help me (which he did not like), so that we could shoot a film every day for six weeks. It was made for £65 and it was called Boy On A Bicycle.

Usually, when special effects get in the way, it's because the story isn't strong enough. If you don't start with a strong screenplay, it's easy to fall back on special effects, thinking it's going to carry you. But it never works. It's just tiresome.

My career seems to be a career of non-specific subjects which are all over the place.

I want to make films about the human condition, what we're doing to the world or ourselves.

Films like Harry Potter and Narnia, I'm sure they'll do another one. The biggest audience of course is the youngsters.

That's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion... Everyone are tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god.

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.