Director

The last time I played video games was 'Space Invaders.'

I like the realism of anti-heroes. It's a healthy thing. I think heroes can be very unhealthy at times because it doesn't connect you to reality.

I don't really play games and don't know much about them, but my son certainly does.

Comedy, I'm still in awe of. I think you need a comic genius somewhere in the mix. It's got to be the actor or someone. But the 'comic genius' actors are the darkest people on the planet - and that kind of scares me!

What was so amazing and inspiring about 'GoodFellas' was that it showed the foot soldiers; the people more at the bottom as opposed to focusing on the godfathers and the guys at the top.

I am very keen to do a film that's female-led.

The Globes are voted for by anyone in L.A. who's ever written for a foreign newspaper or magazine. That means, like, Romanian cookery writers.

For all the spectacle of CGI, there's something alien and unreal about that domain, like a videogame.

It's not awards per se that bother me; it's entirely to do with the impetus they give for marketing a film.

I like restraint. Even with actors, restraint is something that I work on the most.

I think the environment is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced.

Certain films, when shot digitally, the detail is like CG: you can't feel the sweat. I feel like digital is alienating. There's something superficial to digital compared to the richness of film.

I love the sci-fi movies where it's from the point of view of humans in that situation... When it becomes too clever in its ideas, the cyber-punk, high-tech thing, it becomes more about something else.

I kept hearing about this incredible guy called Tom Hardy. I started watching his work, and I was awestruck - he was amazing.

I like to do commercials that are more than just flogging a product. It needs to have something to say. It's always an opportunity for a director to say something substantial and interesting.

Film has its own innate poetry.

I've learned a lot about getting film sensibilities on digital.

I love those sorts of stories where you actually see the consequences of what violence does physically to people as well as psychologically.

My own personal aesthetic is all to do with real actors and real locations and a kind of almost hyper reality and actuality to things. But the digital world, I explore that through other mediums, with music videos and commercials. Even 'The Road' was a real learning curve for me with digital effects.

What's amazing about 'White Heat' is that, even for its time, it's very truthful in the way it deals with violence.