The ego is there, but I'm learning to channel it.

Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies.

I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds.

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

Cast is everything.

I do a pretty good job at casting actually.

I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

Business fascinates me. It's very creative.

Sometimes, scenes are great without any music at all.

I'm a reader. I found out that, whether you're a studio head or a director, you must read your own material. You can't rely on readers.

Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.

'The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western.

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.

The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.

One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition.

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

I'm an Englishman who did a film on Mogadishu, 'Black Hawk Down.'

I want a certificate that allows me to make as big a box office as possible.

For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.