I actually studied literature and philosophy. So, when I started making films, I didn't really know what I was doing, and I was too proud and arrogant to learn.

I connect with all of the characters in my films. That's what makes you want to make a film, that you can enter the mindset, the situation, the conflict, the contradictions.

I'm so happy when someone does something original, and there's no focus group or planning committee. If the cinema doesn't get an injection of that once in a while, we're in trouble.

The luxury that I have is I'm not career-minded, I just live from one film to the next. For a time, I was making documentaries, and all my documentaries were winning awards and stuff, and then I lost interest in documentaries.

When I was growing up, I kept hoping that I wasn't really gay because I wanted to have children. I went through a long, tortured period, so the fact that I have been able to be true to myself and have a family has been the nicest surprise of my adulthood.

I come from a blue-collar family. My father worked at the American Can Company as a mechanic. He broke his back and was disabled, and the first memory I have of him is in the hospital. My mother was a working mother - she had two jobs. Everybody in the house had to help out.

Fame, do I like it? No. It has bought a lot for me in my career, but there are a lot of downsides to it. You give up your privacy. I did it to myself but not to my family and friends. You don't ask for it. You just have to live with it.

It's a life choice to be a girl chef, as it is to be a boy chef. It feels pretty natural to me. It's a full-time, full-scale, full physical job, and a lot of times, it can take the place of kids and family. To be in this career is much more difficult for a woman to have a family, marriage - whatever that means. It's not a 9-5 job.