Years ago, when James Bulger was murdered, every newspaper front page was talking about evil. At that point, having suppressed it for years, I remembered when I was four or five, I tried to kill my own brother.

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival.

We're like the raw food movement in cinema - so determined to give people things that do some good, that they recognize as real.

That whole Deep End experience of finding yourself with the dead body: you know you didn't kill it, but you know if you're found with it, you're gonna be done for it, so you have to get rid of it. And that's a really important nub of Young Adam — Joe knows for absolute certain that if someone comes around the corner, that's it. Nobody's ever going to believe what happened. So that has nothing to do with identity or sexuality, but that is a link. I'm just fascinated by it.

I would say, and this sounds like a rather immodest thing to say, but the truth is it's probably the most amazing thing of all, it's pretty much exactly what I thought we were going to make, what I hoped we'd make.

I'm interested in that whole question of where we wear our identity and how can we see it.