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Frank is such a great visual storyteller, that if you study his artwork you see that his Sin City books are already the best movies never seen on the big screen.

Years ago, Barry Diller asked me to be a judge on a pilot for an inventor show on USA, and when it was over, the producer, Ken Mok, took me out to dinner and really got me talking. It was a long dinner. Afterward, he said, 'One day, I'm going to write your movie'.

'Miracle at St. Anna.' I was challenged by Spike Lee. When he offered me the film, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'You start this film off and you end this film. I don't want a dry eye in the theatre. Can you pull that off?' He was dead serious.

I learned my phrasing from Frank. I loved him so much.

I phoned my grandparents and my grandfather said 'We saw your movie.' 'Which one?' I said. He shouted 'Betty, what was the name of that movie I didn't like?

Everything about the studio was enormous. You walked through the gates of iron, and it was palatial looking. The first day, I was introduced to Clark Gable. He said, 'Hello, kid. Welcome to MGM. I'm just leaving.'

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

Frank's really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well.

I was very blessed it was Steven Spielberg who made the movie. He was very much into the redemption side of the story. They asked him in an interview why he had owned the rights to this story for 20 years before he made the movie, and he said, 'I wanted to see what the real Frank Abagnale did with his life before I immortalised him on film.'

I worked on a film short with Frank Sinatra when I was a kid.