I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.
England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.
I never want to make a film. I don't wake up in the morning going, 'Ooh, I'd really love to be on set making a film today'. I'm aware that other contemporary film directors perceive film-making as what they do, as what they have to do. But I would hope that I am more catholic in my tastes.
There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.
I always say, 'I really need to take a break.' It's three days in and I'm getting pretty bored.
The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.
I would love to do something for TV... I wanna do 'Kavalier & Clay' on HBO as an eight-parter. It'll be so much better as a series, honestly.
At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.
I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.
I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.
Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.
Most theater methodology is predicated on the idea of repeated actions. That's what you work toward. Having the actor repeat the same moment eight times a week. In a film, it's getting that one moment right.
When I got married, my mother was very surprised. She said: 'What on earth is going on? I thought you were gay?'
I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.
I think it's absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.
I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.
Ring up your parents and ring up your kids and tell them that you love them.
I'm not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, 'This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.' I usually say, 'I know who would be good for this. It's not me.'
There has been one defining production for me in each decade.
You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.
