'Hanna' was nice. It was Saoirse Ronan's idea. Usually, the director casts the actor, but in this case, the actor cast the director.
I fell in love with film and its potential. The idea of putting one image next to another image and creating meaning blew my mind.
Most actors hate the feeling of being handled.
When I left college, I though that I would be immediately embraced by the film world and instead found myself sitting in a squat for three years not knowing what to do with my life.
I find man's inhumanity to man extraordinary,,, I can't get my head around it.
I was once called a hack, and when you put as much emotion into a piece of work as I do, to be called a hack is really heartbreaking.
I'm very interested in dance, and I'm very interested in how people express themselves through movement. And of course, cinema is a kinetic art form. It's almost the point of cinema - it's time-based and movement-based.
I'd like to make the film of Sam Selvon's book 'The Lonely Londoners.'
I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.
I've been lucky over the past few years. Things have just happened for me.
I feel more in touch with the world when I'm filming.
There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.
'Blue Velvet' changed my life forever. It was like I'd always read Chaucer and suddenly discovered Charles Bukowski. It made me understand that there is poetry of sublime ecstasy and dark terror, and it spoke to a side of me that hadn't been reached before.
I had a breakdown after making 'Atonement.'
American actors are very different to British actors who have generally studied and been brought up culturally with the sense that the writer is the star and that their job is to serve the writing. Whereas Hollywood actors are brought up to believe that the actor is the star, and everything and everybody is in the service of them.
I'm not good when idle.
It's not something someone sets out to do - I never really set out to make movies about strong fighting women, but it just seems to happen that way. I've certainly known some, and I think my sister was probably a big influence.
I find men odd. I don't really understand men. I kind of feel like I understand women better than I do men, really.
You need a pulse in a film. If I see a film that doesn't have rhythm, it's like listening to music that doesn't have rhythm; it doesn't really work.
With 'Atonement,' I put a lot of pressure on myself, and then I made an advert for Chanel, which 'broke the camel's back' emotionally.
