Yes I was correctly quoted in saying I introduced sex into films in the 20's but it was sex in good taste and left a great deal to one's imagination.

Charles Laughton who's a great hero of mine only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever which is 'The Night of the Hunter.' It's full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio.

They seem much rarer now those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.

Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.

I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor.

Even if I went off to some other career I hope I would still be doing Coen films.

I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make and that gives me hope.

I think films have to reach people and really grab them. That's what I hope to do when I make a film - to get under your skin and really make you think about something and have a transporting time that takes you somewhere.

In between films I like to travel and hope to visit every continent before I become a mother.

When you're young you want to make every kind of film: musicals Westerns horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

I don't want to make films that give you the answer. If there is a message to my films - and I hope there isn't - it's to be open-minded.

I don't think I'm a total pessimist so I think you can find hope in all my films.

We have three generations at home including my father-in-law. I keep a very low profile and a lot of things I do are very much with the family in mind. I have actually made films with the family around me.

I am at home in many cultures. I live actively in three continents and I've done that for most of my life so I just make films as I see the world and that happens to speak to people. I do things that I want to do.

You earn very little money on independent films and I'm the provider for my home so I do have to think of taking one for the accountant time and again and that means studio pictures.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say I love his movies I love his choices-because he loved them.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

If I had a choice as to my perfect career I would make a couple of films a year and then concentrate on natural history.

The process of making natural history films is to try to prevent the animal knowing you are there so you get glimpses of a non-human world and that is a transporting thing.

I don't have incredible knowledge about films or of filmmaking history I'm not that kind of person.

As a bookish child in Calcutta I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of happiness swept them outside the bounds of social decency. Tess of the d'Urbervilles Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina lived large in my imagination. The naughty girls of Hollywood films flirted and knew how to drive.

A few months after graduation I was working in films. It took off pretty quick.

In feature films the director is God in documentary films God is the director.