Something happened to me when I wrote female characters in my early plays; it was a real liberation.

Is my job as a child, even as an adult, is my job to heal the wounds of my parents' childhoods?

The job in every re-write is to make it harder for your characters to get the thing that they need.

Well, because my films are really about how people interact with each other, and the complexity, and the nuance, and the surprise of those moments I try to create a safe enough space that allows the actors to operate from their own instincts. My direction is more suggestions, prompts or questions.

If your child has something creative they really want to do, it's up to you, their parent, to help make that happen.

I started playing bluegrass with my family, so there were the G, C and D chords. I was playing a Martin acoustic because that's what Carter Stanley of the Stanley Brothers played. Then I got into the really raw blues of Hound Dog Taylor and started on electric guitar.

I've got a lovely family now, I've got two boys.

I didn't want the children to grow up and, when asked what their mother did, say, 'Oh, Mom's a gun moll in the movies.'