There's a paraphrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.
Less racist now but it has been. I don't think it's been completely stamped out. There's a class element to it. And who's supposed to do what. You're very unlikely to get a gay grip.
On his fight scene with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones: It was a delicious experience.
I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.
I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.
I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy's is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science, in a way. And when you're filming, the thing comedy depends on becomes a much more difficult commodity. The thing you depend on is spontaneity.
I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.
However good a communicator a director is, unless they've been actors, it's just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who's been an actor.
The way I've described Helen's sort of rigorous honesty I just think he also has tremendously. It's very strange... he just has this sort of way of making it happen really. You're not really aware of being directed, so much as being a part of this thing.
I've actually heard people protesting furiously about straight male costume people as well. It's not universal and there are examples that break the mould all over the place. In my experience, it's more prevalent in the UK than in America.
The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
There's no point in it unless it's a story that you really want to tell. It's a nebulous job. Unless you're doing it well, you're not doing anything. And there are a few of those. It's perfectly possible to be a passenger on a film set because if somebody else has written it, you can make nothing of that role and that's exactly what bad directors do.
I can't bring you absolute truth in the detailed factual sense. All I can do is bring you an interpretation as I understand it. That's all you can ever get from an actor.
I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.
I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.
And that is a hard route for a woman to come through. There's still a lot of roles that have to be conformed to. It's quite an old fashioned environment in a lot of ways.
Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.
When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week's wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours, because they see so little of the profits. Oxfam's fair trade campaign helps right this wrong.
Hollywood hasn't aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.
I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."
If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting.
Doing a job, or even watching a film, can make a difference to your life, but I don't think it ever has an explosive impact where your life will never be the same again. It kind of seeps into your life, and perhaps realise you're a little more vigilant about certain things than you might have been.
So, if you haven't picked up some tips during an apprenticeship like that, you shouldn't be directing. It doesn't mean you can do it, but it loads you up with information.
The great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it.
If I were to write a book about the progress of getting to a third film, it would be a long one.
