Growing up the son of a director has made me very aware of the various turns that a directing career can take. Sometimes your films turn out exactly as you want. Sometimes they don't. I spent a lot of my childhood on sets. I think as a joke, my father gave me a line of dialogue in each of his films during the worst moments of my puberty.

Growing up sucks, doesn't it? I understand why people wouldn't want to get old - but it'd be one thing if we became a culture obsessed with eating right, doing yoga, going to therapy and becoming at one with ourselves. That be great. But we don't do that. We seem to be obsessed with all the wrong ways to stay young.

Alien' asked ground-breaking questions about eco-politics and female empowerment. 'The Matrix' delved deeper into the concept of perception versus reality than perhaps any other film I know. But for some reason, we tend not to remember the significance of their writing.

I'm not going to have a perfect career. It's better to be Billy Wilder and make lots of movies and have five or six great ones than to make so few movies that when you make a bad one it crushes you.

There's a lot of different styles of hypnosis. There's conversational hypnosis, which, even though we joke about it, politicians use conversational hypnosis. I've been hired back at home in Ireland by certain politicians to assist them in specific language patterns that will just tip people over into their, you know, into their zone.

I've always loved doing comedy.

I do want to make powerful works of art with people, but I also just want to have fun. I've never done a romantic comedy - I'm sure it would be a blast.

You can be good at comedy, which means you'll be given spots, but beyond that it is luck that pushes you to the next level. There are loads of brilliant comedians who haven't had the breaks, and plenty of average comedians who have.