JOE WRIGHT

I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.

'Pride' is my first film with a happy ending. Before, I naively thought they were a cop-out, but now I've come to believe that happy endings and wish fulfilment are an incredibly important part of our cultural life.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.

Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.

I wouldn't presume to know something, but I have lots to learn and that's what I attempt to do through my work.

I see the job of directing as being one of creating the right atmosphere, creating an environment where people can realize their full potential.

I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.

Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.

There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.

An artist needs to live to create, and to live means to suffer.

Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.

I feel more in touch with the world when I'm filming.

Generally, I've never known quite how to fit in in civilian life, but on set, making a film, I know exactly where to go, how to behave and how I fit.

I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.

I like the idea of doing something outside my comfort zone.

I've been lucky over the past few years. Things have just happened for me.

My father was 65 when I was born so we didn't have much time together.

American actors are very different to British actors who have generally studied and been brought up culturally with the sense that the writer is the star and that their job is to serve the writing. Whereas Hollywood actors are brought up to believe that the actor is the star, and everything and everybody is in the service of them.

With 'Atonement,' I put a lot of pressure on myself, and then I made an advert for Chanel, which 'broke the camel's back' emotionally.

Studios are often very nervous of things they don't recognize, by which I mean things that haven't been done before, and therefore, they take a really original idea, and they recognize the originality, and then they try and make it look like something they recognize. So they try to turn it into something far more procedural.

I fell in love with film and its potential. The idea of putting one image next to another image and creating meaning blew my mind.

'Blue Velvet' changed my life forever. It was like I'd always read Chaucer and suddenly discovered Charles Bukowski. It made me understand that there is poetry of sublime ecstasy and dark terror, and it spoke to a side of me that hadn't been reached before.

I find man's inhumanity to man extraordinary,,, I can't get my head around it.

I'm very interested in dance, and I'm very interested in how people express themselves through movement. And of course, cinema is a kinetic art form. It's almost the point of cinema - it's time-based and movement-based.

Most actors hate the feeling of being handled.