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.

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

I'm a moviemaker, not a documentarian. I try to hit the truth.

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 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.

It's the best of the best. No film can hope to top it(Kubrick's 2001).

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.