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I would have been very happy just working from job to job, paying my rent one movie at a time. I never wanted to be this famous. I never imagined this life for myself.

I was absolutely obsessed with the Titanic - not the film, the actual boat. I'd draw diagrams about it and theorise that if it was built in a different way, it wouldn't have sunk.

After I graduated from Brandeis, I took all the money I had in the world, which was $5,000, and I made a short film. I made every mistake you could possibly make. It was a total disaster as a piece of work, and yet, you know, it was ambitious in some way.

I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of.

It would be the ultimate dream for me to win an Academy Award, be in love and have kids. Then I would say, 'Life is great! I have done everything I wanted.'

I could have made a small film and kept all the money from 'Life is Beautiful'. Instead, I spent more money than I had on 'Pinocchio', a very risky film.

I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.

I never saw 'Titanic' as a springboard for bigger films or bigger pay cheques. I knew it could have been that, but I knew it would have destroyed me.