As a performer, I'm constantly fascinated with the idea of being able to know what anybody else's experience is, and how misleading all informatives, like appearance, can be.

The last time I did anything like this [special powers] was with the Narnia film with two swords, the same but different.

You can sit next to somebody on the underground, and you can look at them quite intensely, but you can never, ever know what they're wearing under their clothes.

The work is different in the sense that I haven't had to travel round the world raising money, or work from the genesis of the project. But the collaboration feels clear always, it's sort of my drug, I'm in it for the conversation. The conversation's the most important part of it.

I'll tell you one thing, and this is banal to say because it just makes it sound like it's all planned, and nothing is planned at all. But one link is with The Deep End, and one link is that I'm making a film later on that revolves around the relationship between an innocent party and a dead body.

I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity.

Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.