Sometimes you take something because it's an offer and it's big and it's good money and you have to absolutely respect that process, because it's not easier.

I am someone who thinks that if you've got an actor like that who wants to perform your work, then you should do it, and hopefully Tom [Hardey] likes to do the work that I do, so long may it continue.

I think that it's not a bad thing to not be too versed in the vocabulary of cinema, because you start to think that certain things are allowed and not allowed.

It has to be an actress like Marion Cotillard [in Allied] because there are so many levels to it. It's set in the Second World War, when lots of people were doing things that, outside of a war, you wouldn't do, like killing and dropping bombs. She's doing things that one wouldn't approve of, but it's war.

There's lots of different ways of writing stuff and lots of different mindsets to have, but I think when it's your own creation, it's more pleasurable because you have total control.

There [in Allied] were things that were written that were cut, and things that were shot that were cut, but if the film works, they are erased from memory.

With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.