Everybody reads for me. I was never weird about that. I never minded coming in and reading. They should know if I'm the right person, and I should know if I want to do a movie.

Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV.

I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.

When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!' But we were as white, straight, and middle-class as the next family on our white, straight, middle-class housing estate.

I love it right now. I love being retired. I think I retired at a perfect time in my career. Now I get an opportunity to spend time with my wife and kids and get to be very supportive of them. My son is playing football right now. My daughter is in gymnastics. Both are competing at a high level. So it came at the right time.

When I was born, my mother was very disappointed. She wanted a son. I knew that from a very early age. So I was a tomboy.

I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.