Carmen Ejogo

You have to be willing to be afraid if you're going to be an artist. ”

Any good director, and I've worked with a few that I would call very good, they know how to disarm any anxieties very quickly. ”

I really feel that I had a genuinely diverse, multicultural upbringing, and I just don't find New York to be quite as diverse. Maybe I'm romanticising, but I feel that I was exposed to a real melting pot in terms of culture and pop culture. My kids are essentially middle-class, but I do try to remind them that they come from humble beginnings. ”

I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it. ”

I was a big fan of John Cassavetes, his wife, Gena Rowlands, and that era of filmmaking which was about realism and which represented the antithesis of the dreamy escapism you found in musicals. ”

I wanted to work with Mike Leigh. I had my list of British people I wanted to work with, and I wanted to work with David Lynch and Woody Allen. ”