I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.
So much of today's film culture, in England and America, is based on lies, really. The industry is very ambitious, and success has become such an opium, people start from the wrong place they forget sometimes that the core of what we do is storytelling. It serves a need, a purpose for the individual and society to pull us together in shared experience and help us realize we're not alone in that experience.
I think that people are still trying to understand each other and overcome prejudices. And people are still, most important, loving each other. And that is today as it was yesterday and will be for another 200 years.
I see the job of directing as being one of creating the right atmosphere, creating an environment where people can realize their full potential.
Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.
Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.
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 don't ever want to go backwards, I quite like it. I like the freedom and I like the - What I set out to do was to make a big action-adventure movie that ticks all the boxes in terms of audience expectations and spectacle, and yet also make a very personal film and it feels like I've gotten away with that, I've managed that.
I've been wanting for some time to find a way of stylizing cinema and trying to get closer to the emotional story I was telling and get rid of all the bumph that goes with it and allow the audience a more participatory experience. It was an attempt to do all of those things and to express the idea that all these people were just performing roles in their lives.
I think people are at their most creative when they're relaxed. I don't believe that tension is good for creativity. Everyone is relaxed and therefore can feel able to express their own individual creativity and lots of ideas come in. It's a joy like that.
I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.
I feel more in touch with the world when I'm filming.
Generally, I've never known quite how to fit in in civilian life, but on set, making a film, I know exactly where to go, how to behave and how I fit.
I like the idea of doing something outside my comfort zone.
I worked hard, but I was lucky the right people happened to see my work.
I went to comprehensive school in North London and left without any qualifications [diploma]. And I was doing bits of acting and improv in a drama club in the evenings. Then I discovered you didn't need qualifications to go to art school, you just needed a body of work.
I'm quite spontaneous in my decisions often. Your career is kind of what happens whilst you're busy developing other screenplays, and so it came out of the blue.
I was known for a while for doing very long takes, especially after Atonement.
3D doesn't work quite so well with quick cuts and I probably would have done some longer takes had I really taken that information onboard.
My first cut that I showed the studio was probably 2hrs 20min.
I was really excited to try 3D and play with it really, again, experiment formally with that extra dimension.
One of the things I really love about 3D is that because as we grow older on eye weakens more than the other, 3D becomes more difficult for adults to watch than it is for children who have very balanced eyes often.
I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.
I wouldn't presume to know something, but I have lots to learn and that's what I attempt to do through my work.
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.
