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.

I think about dying a lot, every time I fall asleep on a train or a plane I expect to wake up to a crash!

If you're cast on 'The Vampire Diaries,' the likelihood of you dying is very good.

Europe, which gave us the idea of same-sex marriage, is a dying society, with birthrates 50 percent below replacement.

Even when you're making a movie about life, death is a presence, and I guess it's part of my dramatic viewpoint. I'm not sure why exactly.