I decided to be a filmmaker when I was 12. I had utter clarity that this would be my life.

The irony of a director going to film festivals is you never get to see any of the films.

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.

If you look at Shakespeare's history plays, what the setting of monarchy allows is this extraordinary intensification of emotions and predicament.

I think directors can become overly infatuated by gilt and gold, and the word "lavish" and everything being magnificent.

I think people enjoy finding out something genuinely new.

Thank you to my wonderful actors, the triangle of man-love which is Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and me.