I've always been interested in films where you can identify with the actors. Where you can be in their shoes and therefore be more involved if they're people that you recognize.
If you are prepared to make a fool of yourself for them then you usually get that back. I think that there are points where you become so close to an actor, you know them so well, almost as well or better than their spouse. You have to know them, warts and all.
Always, with any movie that I do, I have a book of ideas that I've heard, or seen, or whatever, and I always try to incorporate it in the film.
Well, I think just the fact that you are making your first film is a huge step.
It's the sort of subject that always interests me: jealousy and the language of suspicion and guilt. I think it interests people.
What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.
Well, Brief Encounter is certainly one of my top five favorites of all time. I looked at Brief Encounter very closely, to be honest.
I was watching Monster's Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It's just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done. It made me feel very old, really, because it wasn't eccentric for its own sake, it was just very original.
Foxes was a movie that didn't do a lot of business but it didn't do too badly critically and eventually they offered me other things. The interesting thing was that next I tried a film called Star Man, which Michael Douglas was producing.
I was speaking to Ridley Scott the other day and he makes a film every 18 months. He's amazing really.
Their every instinct - and I have to say this is without exception - is to iron out the bumps, and It's always the bumps that are the most interesting stuff.
The danger is that if you have a bunch of ideas that you forget to use.
I think you get better at staring into space. Especially living in the South of France.
Somebody said that I'm a bit like a sponge, grabbing things here and there, soaking stuff up. [As a director] you have to be, really.
The challenge, really, on any new film is to try to avoid that and achieve a few moments that aren't cliche.
I wanted to make a movie about the arbitrary nature of love.
Obviously, in dealing with a relationship, sexuality has to be involved, and jealousy and emotions like that. And I don't know, I've always been intrigued by those emotions.
