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I like some of the early silent films because I love to watch how actors had to play then. What would interest me today is to do a silent film.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.

I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.

I think I should have made 'Dead Silence' as an independent movie.

I've always loved silent movies. I recently saw 'Tilly's Punctured Romance' at the Academy, which is the first comedy made with Charlie Chaplin in 1914, and I sat there, and I couldn't believe that the entire audience of 2,000 people were laughing that hard from a movie made in 1914 - and there were no words; it was all faces.

Silent films were, I think, more different than we know to sound films. We think of it as simply that we added dialogue and in actual fact I think it was an entirely different art form.

Friends told me not to bother with the silents - they're jerky, poorly photographed and ludicrously badly acted. But I was immediately struck by the freshness and vitality of these films.

I enjoy my work, no matter who I am working with. Even if you give me a solo silent film, I will enjoy it.

'The Quiet Ones' was my first film, let alone my first horror film, and I had so much fun. I had such a laugh, every single day. I look like such a feral child in it.

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.