"The Iron Giant is the movie that makes me cry the hardest. It’s just the best movie. It’s so good. It was sort of my test movie with girls — which is gross — but I would show it to them, and if they didn’t love it, I was like, “Alright, there’s something wrong with you.” The ending is great, when he says “Superman” is great, “I am not a gun.” I mean, so many moving moments. It’s just perfect."

"You can’t forget animated films either. WALL-E just kills me. It’s so funny because we watched WALL-E with my daughter when she was little, like two and three and four, and she loved it and then we didn’t watch. It was one of those “we watched it 50 times” kind of films. We didn’t watch it for a couple of years and tried to watch it again when she was seven and as soon as she heard the music, in that part where you have to press play and it was lonely music, and she’s like, “It’s just making me feel really sad. I can’t watch it.” Then watching him alone on the garbage dumps and she was like, “But everybody’s gone.” It suddenly just started making her question reality, and she kind of tripped out. I had to turn it off because she started crying."

"I’m also a big fan of comedy as well, so even things to this day like Bridget Jones’s Diary, there was just something about Bridget Jones that I thought … And I guess it’s [Renée Zellweger‘s] performance. I remember there was a lot of talk about the fact that they cast an American in that role, but I think she captured the sensibility of a repressed English girl who was desperate to fall in love so beautifully And as an actor myself, often you caught slack if you’re playing a gay person and you’re not really gay, or you’re playing an American and you’re not really American, or you’re playing whatever it happens to be. I just think if you can find the essence in a character and pull it off, then it doesn’t matter where you’re from or what your nationality is, etc. There’s something to me about that film that’s like the perfect romantic comedy. I just think it’s a bit hard to put my finger on what it is, to be honest. It’s just beautifully executed. Everything’s so well balanced. Often whenever I read a romantic comedy now, I’m comparing it to Bridget Jones and if it’s planned well."

"I’m really worried about these five films. It’s such a tough question. I mean, the first one is easy for me, I can do that right off the bat. The first one’s Back to the Future, for so many reasons: sentimental, cinematic; in terms of just a movie that you love, measuring a movie in terms of how often you can see it without getting tired of it — it’s all of those things for me. I think it’s the most perfect movie ever made. It’s like the form of a movie that all other movies, entertainment-wise, should aspire to. It’s something that I’ll always study — just the storytelling, the efficiency of it. The fact that every element works so perfectly in harmony. It’s a thing to behold."

"Paradieswärts Düül is the best. The first group, they allowed all the kids, all the mothers, all the dogs, it was true democracy. Chaos in action. There’s those four beautiful records that are all from the same forty-eight-hour jam that are unlistenable. But then there’s this record that came after Amon Düül began making an amazing career for themselves. The guys that were a bit more musican-ly than the other ones shuffled off into a room and started to make their own record. It’s just so fragile, it’s almost like the first death-folk record. It’s just so beautiful. The musical interplay is great. They are very much of their times, too. There’s an idealism there, that you can't substitute. It’s the darkest, dimmest, saddest, obscure record."

"I came across that when we were all on a family holiday and we just played it the whole trip. I think it was around the time I was ten or 11, and we just played it constantly. It may have been around the time we had changed from tapes to CDs, and so my parents were re-buying stuff they had on vinyl. I don't remember thinking at the time that they all flowed into each other - [sings various clips] - but I know every bit of that album though, every hook and drum fill. It was so varied yet so cohesive, and I think a lot of that was down to George Martin. I'd never heard anything like it, and even at that age I was blown away by it."

"I got into M.I.A. at a really weird time. I got into her just two years ago. I mean, I first heard her years ago and I thought it was really cool and interesting but I didn't really pay proper attention. But then I listened again two years ago and I listened to her new record and I was like, ""Yeah, whatever"", but I played it some more and I got really obsessed with it. She always maintains this incredible delivery. I guess she's rapping but to me it's the same as singing. Again, it's about moulding your voice to get the sound you want. Rappers do that a lot. I just like it and I don't have a real explanation as to why. I just think it's really good. She's an original and has a unique perspective. I went back to her other records and so I explored her in a way that I hadn't done with any other artist in years. I was on tour and it was just somehow helpful for me at that time. It added some life to my world."