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I'm British - ostensibly British - but I don't know where I really belong, you know?

I'm not a Little Englander. Historically, British people have always been travellers. I look in the world as one place. You have to think in a global sense. Cinema is a global endeavour. My roots are in England but my endeavours are worldwide.

If I go anywhere where there are people who vaguely look like me, there is always that feeling of, 'Actually I do look quite similar to everyone else.' At moments like that, I become very, very British. My accent gets more clipped, and I stride around as if I've got an empire.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

To be the outsider is actually a great thing in England.

Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.

Although I'm not from London originally: I moved down here when I was 16, so it's played a part in my life. It's where I've lived for all that time.

You know, I've just about got used to the fact that people in Britain know who I am on some level, but the notion that there's any kind of international recognition is still slightly bizarre to me.

During my childhood in Cyprus, the British talked about the Cypriots as if the Cypriots were outsiders in their own country. And even though I was born in Cyprus, my parents were American, and so I was an outsider in the land of my birth.

Britain has nurtured me and made me able to make movies that have travelled round the world.