For many years I wanted to do a film, but I never had the courage to clear my desk and say, 'OK I'll take a year off and do a film.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I couldn't stand still at a desk for another year. I wanted to go out there and make films.
I did my first film when I was in the final year of my graduation. At that time, I was still a kid, and I couldn't read the industry very well.
There was a point of frustration, where I thought I should just take a film, even though I didn't want to. I was impatient with being at home. But I hung on to the approach I've always had, which is to wait for a project that I could contribute something unique to.
But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself.
To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It's seven days a week. It's twenty hours a day.
But I don't have such a strong desire to need to get away from filmmaking.
If I heard somebody else say, 'I worked on a movie for five years', I'd be like, 'What? How could it take that long? What were you doing?'
A film set is a workplace for me; it's my office, and nobody really wants to be in a stressful work environment.
When I emerged from drama school, I had no expectation that I would ever work in film.
I took two years away from making films to write a novel.