I guess all my films are about resolving conflicts - and they're all love stories. If they weren't, I couldn't make them.

Even if it's a thriller or a comedy, it's always a love story for me, and that's what I concentrate on, because the love stories are my surrogates for the argument: two people in conflict that see life differently.

When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character.

It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.

Science fiction is a big, big love of mine. I would love to get into that at some point.

I want to get across that science is something that we all have ownership of and we can all take an interest in. We don't all have to understand complex theories, but we should have a working knowledge, like knowing your way round the engine of your car.

Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.

Like tens of thousands of others, I have been a spectator of, rather than a participator in, the activities - political, commercial, sociological, scientific - of the times in which I have lived.