"“It all started on an ordinary day, in the most ordinary place in the world.”—Brief Encounter David Lean’s depictions of two ordinary women (Celia Johnson’s Laura and Katharine Hepburn’s Jane) restraining their desires for Trevor Howard and Rosanno Brazzi, respectively, are two of my all-time favorite cinematic portrayals of forbidden heterosexual love. Incidentally, both use the writing of gay playwrights as source material: Brief Encounter is based on Noël Coward’s Still Life, and Summertime adapts Arthur Laurents’s The Time of the Cuckoo."

"It all started on an ordinary day, in the most ordinary place in the world.”—Brief Encounter David Lean’s depictions of two ordinary women (Celia Johnson’s Laura and Katharine Hepburn’s Jane) restraining their desires for Trevor Howard and Rosanno Brazzi, respectively, are two of my all-time favorite cinematic portrayals of forbidden heterosexual love. Incidentally, both use the writing of gay playwrights as source material: Brief Encounter is based on Noël Coward’s Still Life, and Summertime adapts Arthur Laurents’s The Time of the Cuckoo."

"I would say The Notebook is also another one. Maybe because it’s like a reflection of that similar type of love story. Forbidden love is always nice to see on camera as well. Being young and not being allowed to date kind of started that whole thing. I do remember when Noah and Allie have their kind of sex scene, getting my eyes covered by my mom — which means I was very young. I was maybe like 10 years old when I watched that movie for the first time. But, again, also one of those movies where I watched again when I was 13, and then watched again when I was 14, and 15, and 16, and so on. I always find something new about it, and maybe it’s because now that I’m older, and you experience love differently, it changes the way you watch those movies for sure."

"Towards the end of the list I was getting desperate, but Paris 1919 came to me straight away - it's one of my all time favourite albums. It's like the anti-Transformer; I see it as the antithesis of that record, and I definitely have more love for Paris 1919. I think it's the best album John Cale's ever made. It's odd, because it's a poppy record, but even his poppy records have sinister overtones. And I love 'Child's Christmas In Wales'. It's a very Christmassy album. Do I play it a lot at this time of year? I'm forbidden from playing records at home. I put Berlin on at home once, and it just killed the room. I tried to make it better by playing some Motown, but the atmosphere had gone."