There were a couple of things I lost sleep over with the play 'Frost/Nixon,' so I went back and addressed them a bit more in the film.

In a way, I think of the press as my colleagues. I don't want to throw hand grenades at people who do something that's pretty similar to what I do. But at the same time, we all need to take ourselves seriously and be responsible as professionals. And there was a collective failure in the treatment of Christopher Jefferies.

I've done a lot of work in Hollywood and theatre, but to be honest, the biggest pleasure I've ever got is from the TV single plays I've written. It's a format where you don't mind saying, 'I want to tackle some important themes head on.'

I'm not a vindictive person. But I do want to shine a light on human frailty and heroism in equal measure.

The irony of what I do is that the more you reveal someone in their frailties and shortcomings, the more we feel drawn to them and forgiving we feel of them.

I think I stumbled upon a voice people associate with me with 'The Deal.'

There are many, many things in my work that need redoing - never the structure.

Ambition interests me because it's such a surefire indicator of damage.

I have a great deal of compassion for those in public life and what we have done to them.

I am drawn to characters so full of internal contradictions. Idi Amin was one. I loved writing him.

Sometimes you are lucky enough to get offered things, and there is no rhyme or reason. I am very lucky because I come from England, and you have a whole range of things offered to you, from television plays and shows and theatre, so much more to explore, so it's never really money.

The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.

For a younger generation to imagine a time where there was no security at airports - going around the world in the bar of a jumbo jet, 'Tell the plane to wait, I'm running late!' - there is something very Austin Powers about David Frost, a man who, in all seriousness, would approach women in a safari suit, with sideburns.

I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.

If you think about what you do, if you become self-conscious about it, you've got to be very careful. Because I really like to write without self-awareness of what I'm doing.

As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them.

I don't understand and don't enjoy sci-fi, and it's just that if people aren't real, and they don't live in a real and recognizable society, I don't understand what to do.

I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.

I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.

The first and primary requirement for me in a director that I'd want to work with is: do they love writing, and do they love the collaboration process with writers?

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.

Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.