I don't think that jealousy and love and hate and anger and all those things have changed in the past 200 years - people just express themselves differently.

The story [of Allied] stayed with me, like a stray dog outside the office, waiting.

If you've read something brilliant, it's good. It's good to look out the window and see what's going on in the world.

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.

Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.

I must have been about 11 when I read the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which I read, over and over again.

There were three options [in Allied], which were for [Bred Pitt] to shoot [Marion Cotillard], for them to escape, or for her to pull the trigger, which is a heroic act to spare him. When I was thinking about how it would end, a long time ago, I think I tried each of them to see, but two of them did not work.