I was very fortunate that a teacher saw that I read a lot and got bored very easily and had a lot of energy, so she said, 'You've got to go to this youth theater.' I joined Manchester Youth Theatre when I was really young, and I just loved putting on and being involved in plays and telling stories.

My job is to create a film, where we are capturing truth in performances.

Manchester Youth theater, then the National Student Theater Company, and later, my degree course, all helped form my love of telling stories and directing.

As soon as I got my proper first job, I never did acting again. I think the last thing I did was a Mike Figures film, and then I got a series with the BBC. I'm glad of the experience, because I think it's very, very good to understand what actors go through.

Obsession remains the price of creation, and the writer who declines that risk will come up with nothing more creative than 'The Foxes of Harrow' or 'Mrs. Parkington.'

A lot of creativity coming from the east side of Harlem. It really built my character and who I am.

If when we are taught English we are just taught the rules of grammar, it would take all our love of our language away from us. What makes us love a subject like English is when we learn all these fantastic stories. Feeding the imagination is what makes a subject come alive.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed doing was taking raw sound from locations during the film, like the candy machine, and writing pieces of music to go with them, which is totally unnecessary within the context of the film, because they have their own logic.