In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that.

I've given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me ... and marvel stupidly.

My problem is I'm like a junkie. I want a good movie fix, and I never get that fix.

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.

A lot of people seem to get carried away that something that's made out of paper mâché is going to be better than not. And I always thought the original King Kong, that terrible little puppet with its hair going in all directions, was far more magical than Peter Jackson's incredibly beautifully rendered King Kong. So there's something to be said for a more primitive version of things. I think it's because it makes the audience work a little bit more, because you've got to invest it with life and reality, so I like doing that.

Well, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it – I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.

The success of the Hollywood marketing machine is to limit what we see. Not just to limit what we can see, but also to limit our expectations - to limit what we want to see.