If we had written Tristan in the true vernacular the audience would have been very small. It wouldn't have even been Shakespearean. It would have been so Celtic you wouldn't understand what was going on.

People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste.

As I'm getting older, I want to make sure every film I do really counts.

There's a little thing on your shoulder called intuition and it whispers in your ear. Everyone has that, there is a voice telling you to do something. Most people ignore it - but you must listen to it. I do it every day, all day.

I think I was really bored at school. I was quietly clock watching for years. I went to 10 schools because my dad was in the Army and we moved around a lot.

I think going into space would be like going deep into the ocean, like 5,000 meters down. When you go down that far, it's just awfully black. There's not much there except mud and some particles. I imagine space would be a similar thing. The only difference is you're hoping to bump into some sort of intelligent extraterritorial being.