A British villain never loses their sense of humour.

Actors enjoy being treated as ordinary people.

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

Films about the English monarchy, they tend to have a lavishness, sumptuous imagery, it's all very posh and rich.

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

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

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.