"It was my daughter Tiffany who made me see the beauty of this film—she loved it so much as a child, and I think in many ways it spoke to her on the difficult choice for women artists between art and love, a calling of career and the calling of the heart. The Technicolor restoration of the film is stunning. This was one of the early titles in the Criterion Collection, and it’s just gorgeous. The DVD production was helped along with the loving hands (certainly one of my favorite pair of hands on earth) of film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Michael Powell’s widow.There’s fantastic commentary with cinematographer Jack Cardiff and Ian Christie, as well as Martin Scorsese, a close, dear friend of Powell’s. And actress Moira Shearer gives such a wonderful account of the feelings of awe and fear of the dancers around working with living ballet legend Leonide Massine . . . and how in spite of this, she and Massine came to get on like a house on fire. He would fill her with the most amazing tales of his life in the last true golden age of ballet with the great dance impresario Sergei Diaghilev—I cannot even imagine what a thrill these hours of conversation must have been!"

"That would have to be a James Bond film, and then I was trying to think of what my favorite one would be. And I guess it would probably be You Only Live Twice. Mr. Connery. Even though I really like Roger Moore, too. I mean I liked all the Bonds, honestly. Including the newest, Mr. Craig. He’s fantastic. But yeah, You Only Live Twice. It takes place in Japan as a part of it, and you’ve got Blofeld, Spectre, the classic villains, and the whole thing with the volcano that’s really a secret lair. And you’ve got Russia and the United States. You know, it’s huge in scope. And I don’t know, it’s this great classic Bond to me, and a great song, a great theme song. I think the first time I saw it, I definitely saw it on TV. I’m not sure what year it came out, but I may not have even been born yet when that came out. I mean my first exposure to James Bond was absolutely on television. And then my first one to see in the theater, which I also love, is The Spy Who Loved Me. That was pretty exciting. That was the first Bond I saw at a movie theater."

"I love the sound of ‘I Can’t Explain’. It’s my favourite and I love all those earlier ones. I used do them onstage with a group called The Nightriders and The Idle Race as well. ‘Pictures Of Lily’ and that kind of stuff. I used to love playing all those Who songs. They had something about them, The Who. It was like magic, the sound. And just watching Pete Townshend, he was always amazing. Did I ever catch them back in the day? Yeah! Not half! The loudest bloody thing I’ve ever heard in my life! I went to this place called Midnight City in Birmingham and it was quite a big room and everyone was waiting for them: ""wow! We’re gonna see The Who!"" and they struck up and went BLAAANG! and your earholes would go WOOOOM! and you couldn’t hear a fucking thing! Your hearing was gone! You know when your ears go inside out? And it’s like silence and you can’t hear fuck all for the next 10 minutes until your hearing starts coming back! And gradually you could start hearing them again. It was like a compressor, almost. It was really exciting to hear that when you’re a kid. And the tunes they played were so great. It was beautiful. Fantastic!"

"Well, maybe that’s why David Heyman and Paul King cast me in Paddington, I don’t know [laughs]. You’ll be surprised by my fifth one, then. OK, try and find the link with this: Pulp Fiction. I think that’s the exception that proves the rule. I think it was great, it was such a breath of fresh air. That same year, I remember, I was completely enamored by two films: The Lion King and Pulp Fiction, so you couldn’t get more extreme than those two. They both have death in them, I suppose. But Pulp Fiction was such a great breath of fresh air when it came out, and I think it still remains such a cool and fantastic piece of the cinema. Obviously it was the second film after Reservoir Dogs that brought Tarantino into the fold, but I think it’s a gloriously slick and entertaining piece of movie-making, structurally and cinematically, with these great, legendary performances that were instantly loved, and instantly classic and endlessly imitated. The number of people I’ve seen doing Christopher Walken impressions — or Bruce Willis impressions from that movie — or indeed Samuel L Jackson… It’s sort of a great cinematic feat and [it’s filled with] dark, dark humor."

"This is a record that I found from trawling the racks. It was the cover that intrigued me – a guy playing electric guitar in desert robes in a tent. I had to find out more. Tinariwen were a band that had an extended tribe, so people would come in and take over the vocals. They had different players. Later I learnt that the leader would take his guitar and go off into the desert and write the album under the stars. Years later I met up with them and discussed me and Brian Eno going out and spending time with their tribe, the Tuareg, and recording with them in the hills of Mali. We talked about it and started to plan it out, and then Underworld went on tour and that was that. Brian and I still talk about it. I listen to a lot of African music, that fantastic polyrhythmic, joyous tumbling sound which, for me, was techno. They did it so beautifully and made it sound haunting. They are a phenomenal group. This album was their first – it was recorded by a French group who had heard about their music and just went out to the desert and found them. It’s crudely beautiful."