"I feel as if I'm in 'A Star Is Born and any moment Norman Maine will come up and whack me in the mouth." Upon receiving the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 2002 "I was rather a lazy student. My interests were Drama and taking girls to parties. However, they locked the college gates at 11 o'clock, and if you were out later than that, the girls would take off their party dresses, climb over the gates and then re-assemble themselves on the other side. A rather charming sight!" "What I dislike about movie culture is that it often presents a parable of our problems - but the issues are all straightforward and the people are either nice or they're not. In real life, everyone falls between those perimeters, but not many American films operate in that gray area." "When you make your first film, there is a hell of a lot to think about, and you've got to have a gut understanding of your material. It's not enough to say, 'I've met people like this.' You've got to know them inside out. So with Separate Lies I placed my characters in a class that I understand, but it doesn't mean that this is a film about class. It's about being trapped, about the consequences of our choices, and about lying." We live in an era of tremendous dishonesty where people, even nice people, will say things they know are not true because they want to be perceived as someone who thinks they are true. But I think this is dangerous. I think personal dishonesty in a society is as dangerous as it is in an individual. For most of us the biggest journey in life, and certainly the toughest journey, is towards self-knowledge. There are limits to what any of us can achieve in life. If I wanted to be a catwalk model, I would be in trouble. But the greatest limit of all is when we do not know ourselves and when we do not admit that truth about ourselves to ourselves, and that buggers up our life. I have an absolutely phobic horror of controlled relationships. I despise controllers. And when I see that slightly patronizing relationship going on in front of me, as you often do in our industry, where the man who quite deliberately takes a partner who is less sophisticated, younger, from a less advantaged background or whatever, and he is becoming a kind of Higgins to her Eliza, I just want to punch him. I really hate it. The wonderful thing about King Oscar is he makes all things possible, although a lot of the time you do keep thinking, 'Moi?' We have this funny, ambivalent feeling about success and about achievement, so that all we usually get is some actress standing up in an evening dress and bovver boots telling you that winning doesn't matter. We can't give ourselves to these things and they're only fun if you give yourself to it. Whether you're doing a job or making love, you've got to let go of the side, and the Americans just do.