A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.
In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore.
I hate it when something is set in 1967 and every piece of furniture was made in 1967. No! If it's set in 1967, people have furniture given to them by their grandmother, which she bought in 1932!
Filmmaking is something I have to do. It's not something I particularly want to do.
I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.
I know virtually no one of my age who can remember a hug, or a smile from their father, or a 'Let's go play football.'
Life is much weirder than fiction; nothing's more absurd.
I find the world more absurd now than I did when I was a kid.
When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.
In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.
You have to just go with your imagination, where your instinct takes you.
There are some people who walk into a room and they oxygenate it, by their very being there's fresh air. Then there are those who come in with the smell of death and they suck the life out.
The films that I really enjoy now are films that are made by, for wont of a better word, mavericks.
Just in relation to women, it's not that huge an imaginative leap to see the connection between the Taliban and the Catholic Church.
It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.
There's no such thing as an actor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer', that director's going to hate your guts. Particularly if it's a good idea.
If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean.
The Vatican has tried to condemn 'The Magdalene Sisters' as a pack of lies and that I've made it all up - I wish I was that good a dramatist - and in terms of public relations, that was the daftest thing they ever did.
Part of the reason why movie bosses are so obsessed with crime movies is because they know that world and the criminals. And that's what they are - they would not hesitate to act illegally to achieve profit and gain.
I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.
The fact in acting, you can tap into your darkest moments in life to your lightest moments. And people will watch it, and appreciate it, and even engage with you because of that. That's the greatest job one Earth.
Every film I've ever worked on, and that includes 'Braveheart' and 'Trainspotting,' I've always witnessed a director having a breakdown. Every director will have a day, without exception, where they just can't do it anymore, they don't know what to say to their cameraman, their cast. It's the sign of real, physical exhaustion.
Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.
Sometimes you have to confront your demons and sometimes even let them loose to genuinely find a place where you can gain some understanding.
It takes a very strong brain to resist the absolutes, the myths that the media and the politicians peddle - the idea that if you are too kind, where does it all end? That not to help someone is somehow a good idea.
