It's exotic for me to be given a script that's already written, and be given a pay cheque, and asked to dress up and play, and that's all.

If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true.

Well you know, the comic strip [Doctor Strange]... yeah, was an Asian man, in fact, a very ancient Tibetan man living on the top of a mountain. The film script that I was given wasn't an Asian man, so I wasn't asked to play an Asian man - I was asked to play an ancient Celtic person.

When I say that it's taken us [with Luca Guadagnino ] 11 years to make this film, what I mean is that it was 11 years ago that we started to talk about a kind of cinema that we wanted to make together.

We're living in a new Beat time, in my view. And it's very difficult for us to hang on.

We were very clear that this film's [Young Adam] so much about a relationship that's borne out through the sexual contact, and that that's the way they communicate.

There are many graphic artists who have interpreted The Ancient One as a Tibetan Buddhist Lama, we're kind of shifting that a bit. We're trying not to be fixed, we're trying not to be fixed to any one thing, any one gender, any one spiritual discipline, and any one race even; we're just trying to wing it beyond that. So it's a new gesture really, just another interpretation.