I appear to be drawn to iconic characters and what they reflect back to our cultures.

Well, I'm half Australian, half English and I live in London. That is the only reason I came upon this story. My Australian mother, Meredith Hooper, was invited in late 2007 by some Australian friends to make up a token Australian audience in a tiny fringe theater play reading of an unproduced, unrehearsed play called 'The King's Speech.

Nowadays filmmakers tend to recycle the same cliches over and over again.

I have a yearning someday to do one of these huge juggernauts.

The more uncompromisingly specific you are the more you end up touching the bigger universal truths.

The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.

I think English film is very embarrassed by patriotism, generally.