I'd trained to be a diplomat but the state department said I was too liberal. I saw an ad in the New York Times ... a hack Californian editor came to New York to butcher some films and he needed an assistant. For some reason I read it that day and it changed my life. I went to work for him and he was horrible, butchering these masterpieces by Antonioni, Visconti, but I learned enough to know what he was doing wrong.

You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that.

Emeric [Pressburger] was completely cosmopolitan. That's what makes their [with Michael Powell] films so special. Neither of them thought twice about making a film about a friendship between an Englishman and a German during the Blitz. They were genius.

Michael's Powell art director was a painter and they had a wonderful friendship and artistic understanding. Michael himself, in the way he designed his own house, it was always with bright colours. Very un-English!

Michael Powell always used to say 'I'm a typical Englishman'. He was and he wasn't. He was very cosmopolitan and spent a lot of time in Europe.

I'm not a person who believes in the great difference between women and men as editors. But I do think that quality is key. We're very good at organizing and discipline and patience, and patience is 50 per cent of editing. You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that.

Jack Cardiff - the greatest cameraman who ever worked in colour - was a lab boy to start with so he knew Technicolor from the inside out.