I made this film ‘The Beach,’ which didn’t take place in a city, and it didn’t really suit me.
Theres a certain truth that you do end up making the same film again and again so if you vary the genre you have a chance of breaking that cycle.
I’ve just been to the Taj Mahal which I’d never been to and I’m not a very romantic kind of guy but it is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.
The great thing about space films generally, with the exception of Apollo 13, is that big stars tend not to work in space and I think that’s because space is an equaliser. It makes everyone the same really and suits an ensemble cast and actors who are prepared to work with each other.
If the American taxpayer knew how much they paid per person to put Neil Armstrong on the moon they would never have paid it. It was hidden from them deliberately because the costs were astronomical.
I don’t want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them.
When you’re in zero gravity everything moves at the same speed and nothing stops it. If you throw something it travels forever but it still travels at the speed you threw it at. To make it plausible, movies have chosen to show it in slow motion.
I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose – although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope.
I don’t want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that’s under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.
I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it’s humor that’s often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.
I tend to score with songs from Western pop music.
The most important thing about Olympics, of course, is the games and not the opening ceremony. It’s weird the way it gets inverted sometimes.
I’ve sort of escaped my background, as people often do, through art and culture.
I was brought up a very strict Catholic and I don’t practice anymore or anything.
I love watching the Bond movies obviously and I grew up reading the books as a kid. I’ve always loved them because of that.
There’s lots of things that can be solved with cash. And there’s occasional things that can’t be solved with cash, which become a bureaucratic nightmare for some reason, and there’s no distinction between the two.
I trained in the theatre.
A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit.
It just seduces you when you read a story and your brain relates to it. You recognize or connect with it. You identify with it; you’re bound to.
We want to see drama told in a cathartic way, with power, with emotion where you empathize and then you’re frightened. All those feelings charge up in you and you feel for the story.