If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.

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.

Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

I think there's nothing worse than inertia. You can inert and study your navel and gradually you'll fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.

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

You step forward and make it real for a start. You choose a sensible moment in history. Funnily enough, England was bankrupt and the moment is the death of Richard The Lionheart... Richard takes an arrow in the neck collecting a small debt from a small castle on his way home from the Crusades because he's penniless.

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.