The Kind Of Acting That's Wholly Literary

There Is A Great Tradition Of Independent Filmmaking In The U.s. That I Absolutely Respect. There's Some Wonderful Stuff That Comes Out In This Country Against All The Odds.

What I Do Is To Collaborate With Each Actor And Work One-on-one To Create A Character. And That Is A Matter Of Huge Complexity And Is A Combination Of A Great Deal Of Discussion And A Lot Of Practical Work. It Involves A Lot Of Consideration For The Real People Out There, And All Kinds Of Sources Of Real People. The Result Is The Character. But I'm Not Supposed To Talk About What It Is We Do, Because It's Nobody's Business.

I Hate Period Films - And There Are Plenty Of Them - Where They Say, "let's Not Do Contemporary Language Because The Audience Won't Understand It;" "let's Not Make The Girls Wear Corsets, Because It's Not Sexy" And All That Sort Of Thing. Gradually It Disintegrates Into A No Man's Land: You Don't Really Believe It's A Period Scene And It Doesn't Feel Like It's Now Because It's Not Now. You Don't Feel It's Quite Real And You Don't Believe In It.

I'm Old Enough To Have Friends And Contemporaries Who Have Long Since Retired, And That's Their Prerogative - Enough Is Enough; It Doesn't Mean A Thing To Me. But I Haven't Got Any Money, So, You Know, I Just Keep On Working.

I Try And Create For The Audience Something That Relates To Real-life Experience. When You're Meeting Somebody For The First Time, All You Have To Go On Are Your Preconceptions And Your Stereotypes And Whatever Else, But Gradually As You Get To Know Them, They Change. They Become More Three-dimensional, And You Start To See Them In Layers.