Director

I love the discipline of shooting film, because you don't cover everything, and I'm glad that I learned that way.

I hate exposition and superfluous dialogue. I hate when dialogue is trying to explain or patronize or finger-point.

My mum says I was the best kid ever; you could put me in a corner with a box of paints and I'd be happy for hours. They'd say, 'Lynne, Lynne,' and I wouldn't hear them.

I guess I've never really done a straight adaptation. It's been more like 'in the spirit of,' you know?

Where you're running out of time, you have these brainwave moments. It's allowing the space to have them, even in an incredibly tight situation.

We Need To Talk About Kevin,' as an adaptation, was pretty major. It's a long book, and it's in letters, so it was a real editing experience to boil that down and make it cinematic. I learned a lot doing that film.

Sometimes what you don't show creates more of a mystery.

To me violence, once you've done one violent act it leads to another, it leads to another, it leads to another, it becomes routine.

I think you can say so much about a character in lots of subtle ways.

Well, the film industry is completely sexist and completely class-biased. It's not something I get on the ground level, it's more from financiers and producers and distributors. It's a way of dealing with you that is essentially patronising: I know better than you.

I don't really watch TV; YouTube is far more entertaining. But I have tuned in to 'X Factor' - I like trash and nature programmes.

Quite often you get a lot of films with lots of story but no characterisation.

I'm interested in genre in a way, I suppose because you have a framework of something and you can just twist it to explore the psychology or try different subversive ideas on something that feels familiar.

Films I've really liked are when you've walked out and you're still in that movie for a while. That's virtual reality for me, to go into a theatre, especially with the use of sound - a subconscious thing that's underestimated. I remember seeing 'Blue Velvet' when I was 15, and half the audience walking out, but I thought my life had changed.

I remember with 'Ratcatcher,' in the script it was beautiful blue skies and sunny every day, but it rained constantly. You have to go with what the film is going to be.

With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite. But I love great dialogue... I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.

It interests me when I hear people quoting great thinkers, because it's like, OK, but does that make you any brighter?

Working with cool people helps when working with few shots. You trust yourself and them.

A 30-day shoot is a nightmare.

It's a real skill to take a piece of literature and make it in cinema. It's quite a different form, and I think I have to respect that.