Simon Beaufoy

Everyone's got a boulder in their life of one sort or another that they need to overcome. For most people, it's not a literal one, but there are certainly metaphorical ones.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

It's a huge responsibility writing about people who are alive. It's the thing about writing that keeps me awake at night: dramatising real-life events with real people.

When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you can't airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

I just can't get excited about money as a motivation in a film. It leaves me cold.

Everyone hated the title 'The Full Monty' until they saw the film did really well and then loved the title.

I believe innately in the human spirit being a powerful and positive thing. And that just comes out, whether you like it or not. It comes out in the writing.

There isn't a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were a notional threat.

In the midst of global recession, in the face of uncertainty about what's going to happen next, film looks for inspiration to real people.

I guess my approach to adapting books is to treat them with a deep respect on one level and at another level part them to one side and go, 'I'm doing something completely different here.'

The poorest people are so incredibly poor, and the rich are so incredibly rich on the other side. That is a kind of fascination.

It's a very weird thing, making a true story, because you need your freedom, as filmmakers, to do what you need to do.