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Films are big hits when they touch a lot of people. Things are not funny in a vacuum, they're funny because we respond to some personal dislocation, some embarrassment, some humiliation, some pain we've suffered, or some desire we have.

It's tricky: with comedy in any movie, you're hungry for an audience to embrace a movie and be a part of an experience that's comedic; it's the easier way to go in some ways.

Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.

Regardless of what kind of film, the number one rule of comedy is to never take yourself too seriously and then the next rule is you can't have any self-consciousness, otherwise it kills the laugh, and that will never change.

My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.

I always have humour in my action movies. I think characters that make jokes under fire are more real. It somehow helps put you in their shoes.

I get asked, 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.

I love to bring humour into my work. Because comedy is not a huge part of the art world. And big-business film takes itself very seriously.

You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.

To me, what separates a funny movie from a good movie is something personal.