I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.

Well, there are three different processes of making a film, of course. They're sort of re-written three times. You write it to start with, and then you shoot it and you re-write it while shooting and you sort of re-write it as you edit.

At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.

You [as an actor] have a responsibility to Jonathan's book and you have a responsibility to talk about a subject that is going to be, whether it's contentious or not, it's going t bring up a huge, emotional response from people. A lot of people will say they are ready or they're not ready.

If I wanted to work financially, I would have made a series of different choices. I do get offered lots of movies which you could make a lot of money out of. And I always say, 'Why would I do that, when someone else could do it much better than me? Why would I want to do an action picture? Why?

I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.