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In all my science fiction movies, I try to blend the familiar with the futuristic so as not to be too off-putting to the audience. There is always something familiar they can grab onto.

I turn on the TV sometimes, start watching something and think: 'This seems quite good, a bit familiar.' Then I realise... It's one of my movies. It's a pretty odd feeling.

Film is such a bizarre vehicle for acting. It's such a bizarre experience. I don't think you ever really get familiar with it. If you do get familiar with it, you're probably not that good anymore.

When I go to movies and I love the movie, it's because it feels like it articulated something about how we're living now, and also gives me some insight into my own life. I feel actually altered after having seen it.

You know, I find it very strange when movies that I made that were just excoriated - I mean that I was just vilified for - are now looked at as classics.

You see thousands of films you forget the minute you come out of the cinema, don't you? Because they don't mean anything. It's the tough ones like 'Breaking the Waves' and 'Nil By Mouth' that stay with you, that you never forget. I'd like to leave a few of those behind if possible.

Every great film should seem new every time you see it.

I get bored with the same old film coming out every weekend. It feels like it's the same story all the time, and the same visuals, and the characters' dilemmas are remarkably similar.

It often disturbs me, when I see a film set in a historical time, that the people are too modern.