“I've sort of escaped my background, as people often do, through art and culture.”

“The extraordinary thing about India is that it's such a family place. It's full of families everywhere.”

“I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose - although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope.”

“It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.”

“I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.”

“People say you never remember anybody who dies in movies, and it's true, you don't. You don't even remember people who disappear.”

“Actors are steeped in a world of agents and where the next job is coming from and what are their expenses and what is the hotel like. You want to take them out of that world and dump them into another world, so that when you meet them on the screen they don't seem like the guy who was in two others movies that year.”

“Movies about space raise those questions of what we're doing here, and that inevitably introduces a spiritual dimension.”

“I like action movies, even though I think action movies are kind of derided now. But there is something extraordinary about action movies, which is absolutely linked to the invention of cinema and what cinema is and why we love it.”

“I love huge movies. Not sure I am the guy to make them, but you can rely on me being there watching them.”

“I love watching the Bond movies obviously and I grew up reading the books as a kid. I've always loved them because of that.”

“I'm a big sports fan. Football. Cricket.”

“I always think, when there's stuff that people don't like, I always say that if I have another success, I'll enjoy it more, but you don't really.”

“The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.”