"Young Frankenstein, you know… I think Young Frankenstein influenced me because it was a comedy but they really treated it like the James Whale Frankensteins. There’s a real sadness in that movie."

"When I was 12, I spent three weeks isolated on the island of Sardinia with my father and his young family. I found a copy of Clavell on the bookshelf in the home that we were renting and it saved me. Historical fiction became a lifelong love, and James Clavell a guide."

"I was still too young to drive a car when I read James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. The concept of a devastating and doomed love story - one that was also modern ' hadn't occurred to me. I thought nothing would ever compare to Romeo and Juliet, but Baldwin's story of "the night that is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life" became the saddest love story I know."

"Andrzej Wajda’s films had an enormous influence on me as I began writing and directing. I had lunch with him at the National Film Theatre in London, after he had just made Everything for Sale, a film I loved. It was Wajda’s tribute to Zbigniew Cybulski, his friend and the star of Ashes and Diamonds, who died young. In Ashes, Cybulski plays a resistance fighter stranded by a sellout peace. His broodiness and manner seemed to mourn James Dean."