"Steven Soderbergh totally rocks. He is the bravest, smartest, most original filmmaker in the U.S. today. I don’t like all his films, but I not only like but admire most of them; and even in his minor work there is still more genuine love and understanding of cinema than in the most accomplished works of some others. Che, the one movie ever made that seriously deals with military strategy, helped me imagine Carlos on a scale that otherwise would have intimidated me."

"Because I’m half Spanish, I want to add a Spanish film, which I think is a film from the ’70s which is called Raise Ravens — I think was the English title. Cria Cuervos, with Geraldine Chaplin. It’s a film by Carlos Saura, a famous Spanish filmmaker. This is a very peculiar film because it’s a ghost story. It’s a young girl [played by Ana Torrent who is fantasizing. You are in the head of a girl the whole time, and it deals with child visions. Nightmares. It’s a very spooky film, but it also reflects very well Spain at the time and of mysteries within families, and mysteries that go on from one generation to the other. It’s a fascinating film that many people don’t know about. That’s why I want to point that one out as well."

"I came across this early on in my operatic journey, and to this day it remains one of my favourite recordings and one of my favourite operas. The wonderful thing about Verdi is that, as you get older, it starts to make more and more sense: these fraught relationships between fathers and sons and lovers and friends. He's so profound in his understanding of human relationships. This opera, Don Carlos, is in my opinion a great masterpiece on a Shakespearian level in its defining, most notably, of the father and son dynamic. There's actually a moment when the father contemplates killing his son – I don't know, but I think that has crossed the minds of certain dads. And as well as Domingo and Caballé, Shirley Verrett is on that recording, who is one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of all time. So everybody is in there at their zenith vocally, and it's a wild ride."