There has been one defining production for me in each decade.

I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.

You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.

You have to trust your own instincts about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate and trust your own feelings about what you can and can't show for yourself, and it'll be different for everybody.

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.

There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.

The really successful work in England tends to be working-class writers telling working-class stories. The film industry has been slow to wake up to that, for a variety of reasons. It still shocks me how few films are written or made in England about working-class life, given that those are the people who go to movies.