As a director, your job can range from having to lean on someone to get a performance out of them, to someone being so built for the part that all you have to do is make them feel confident and comfortable and assured of what they're actually doing, and you just wind them up and watch them go.

Every kid comes to a point in his life, where you listen to your Dad, but then you go into the street and you start listening to the views of other people. You're looking for role models. It's like that moment when you step out.

Bullying and violence that exists in someone can also be inherent in a nation without us knowing it.

As a director, your job can range from having to lean on someone to get a performance out of them, to someone being so built for the part that all you have to do is make them feel confident and comfortable and assured of what they're actually doing, and you just wind them up and watch them go.

In London, there must be thousands of people in the business of making films, whereas in Nottingham or Sheffield, you're probably talking about below a hundred. So there aren't thousands of people scrapping for the same money and for the same jobs. I went out in Nottingham the other night and there's a really beautiful community of people who are really supportive. It's not this back-stabbing thing, high-rent, high-cost, high-tension. Up here we are independent filmmakers and there's a lovely sense of camaraderie.

I haven't forgotten what it was like to be a kid; especially a misunderstood one

I suppose my dream was always about existing outside of London. Obviously the film world 10 years ago, when I first kicked off, was a very different landscape. Meeting anyone for a job on the crew, and on the cast, always meant a trip to London for me. But it's changed quite dramatically. You can't completely exist outside of what's down there, but things have changed massively.