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've realized that the only thing I'm interested in is the performance. If the performance is right, then I'm happy. You offer up the dialogue and then the performance comes around.

What I wanted to do [in Allied] was get two characters who fall in love for real, across the barricade, and then it transcends the war.

Obviously, television is a writer's medium, so you get a lot more power and authority. With a film, the discipline is having a beginning, middle and end, and having it work in a specific space of time.

I was 21, when I heard the story that inspired this [thriller Allied], and I wasn't even a screenwriter then.

I think the East India Company represents what we would think of as a very modern approach to the world where everything was counted, every penny was counted.

Whenever I see a cut of a film and something is gone, I don't notice it unless it obviously should have been kept.