It won't be the people who were in the first one, They're too busy. Naomie Harris is doing [the sequels to] Pirates of the Caribbean , and Cillian Murphy is in Batman [ Begins ]. They're doing really well. So good luck to them, really.

Even though one of them is about an Edinburgh junkie and one's a little boy of eight in Manchester, you want them to always portray their world in such a vivid way that the audience can disappear inside the story.

I always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church.

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

I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.

I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.