Actors are programmed to see the worst. If you're talking about an actor's TV series, you say, "I loved you last night." And they go, "What about the week before?" They immediately worry.

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.

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

In "The King's Speech," patriotism is utterly contained within a historical moment, the third of September, 1939, where the aggressor is clear, the fight is clear, it hasn't become complicated over time.

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

American cinema tends to express a patriotic relationship to national identity on a regular basis.

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