When I was growing up and somebody like Robert De Niro had a movie come out, it was a cultural event. Because he had such a confidence and a single mission that was so intimate.

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.

The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.

There is a strength of character in the people who have, by and large, never experienced comfort.

I've got mates who have got married through meeting on Internet dating sites, so it really can work out - even if sometimes it does go disastrously wrong.

Beauty is the lover's gift.

I married young. I had an instinct that this man was going to really wear well, and he has. For me, this is what worked. I always admired Helmut because he was, A, very smart, B, very sure of himself and very, very funny, and so that combination of things.

If the rights of civil partners are met differently in law to those of married couples, there is no discrimination in law, and if civil partnerships are seen as somehow 'second class' that is a social attitude which will change and cannot, in any case, be turned around by redefining the law of marriage.