The actual work of recording a record or making a film just requires that you consciously block the time out to do that and nothing else. That's what I do.
When you look at Darling and the Oscars, it has to be luck. It was a black and white film and it was the last time that there was a black and white Oscar.
A lot of the time the film chooses me. I'll be working and I'll get a call from my agent and I'll get the script and then tell him what I think.
My memoir is about my time in film and the decision to leave Hollywood, grow up, and stop pretending.
Films take up so much time, and with theatre, you do have to plan a period of time that you can be free.
Making a film is very hard work, and you live or die by the sword just a little bit every time you do it, but I wouldn't chuck it in.
TV has gotten perhaps better than your average film script, but at the same time, it's fun to give it all you've got for a few months and produce a story.
The benefit of film is that you're shooting something for an intense period of time - and then it's over, and you move on to something else. In TV, you're doing the same thing over and over.
Well I'm not much of a singer. But it's been a really nice time to do film, television, theater and have it all happening at once. That wasn't planned but it just happens.
I think the job of movie reviewing can be really tough. If a film has layers that need to be thought about, it's easy to get missed the first time around.
Even if my film does well, you will not see me blowing my own trumpet. There is no time to sit and dwell on whether it's done well or not done well.
I remember a time when I was younger, when if you had to see an actor, you had to go to the theatre and watch a film.
Clifford Stern: [on Lester's films] I can't watch his stuff. It's sub-mental.
If there's a British film in the marketplace that is successful on a worldwide basis - whether it's 'A Room with a View,' 'Four Weddings' or 'The Full Monty' - money follows, and everyone tries to emulate that success.
I've never made any money off of any of my films. Statement of fact. So without commercial work, I would be in big trouble.
Working on films where the money's more important than the creativity, I just get a bit freaked out by that. I just don't feel comfortable.
There's the concept that if I do this big budget project, then that will help me do the things I really want to do and bring more money to those films.
If you do a film with a studio, agents step in, they start saying, 'My actor has to get this amount of money', and it becomes about deals.
I think that 'Halo' is a hard property because they don't need to make a film. They make far more money out of the games so why risk?
As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.
You realise the responsibility of carrying a film on your shoulders when people are investing money in you and they recognise the hard work you have to put in.
