there was no way I could have accomplished the bin Laden operation without the help of Special Forces

Satya is very good at extracting the maximum value from my time and making sure I look at all the important things. He’s very thoughtful, good at working with people, working through problems in a calm sort of way.

You're missing it. This is not a one-man show. What's reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there's a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they're not losers. What they didn't have was a good set of coaches, a good plan.

My husband, Brian Lindstrom, is my biggest supporter. There’s no doing it without him. When I was writing Torch, he believed in me more than I believed in myself. He’s always, always, always been there for me, every time I needed him. He encourages me. He believes in me.

I would be able to shoot even more if I didn’t have the promotion and all these kinds of things to do. I would do it like Fassbinder — seven films a year — if I could. Making films is a pleasure for me.

But I don’t want to repeat myself. And I realised that in America, the producer is the master of the film and the director is just a technician.

No. You don't have to have rules. If you have rules—you know in cinema you have to be very pragmatic.

No, I’m a very bad father, I abandon all my children. (Laughs.) Right now I’m in the present, and the future – what’s past is past.

I just want to go on walking, you know? I like to continue my work of movies and just go on with the capacity and opportunity to do exactly what I want. To stay free.

Yes and it’s also more difficult today to finance a film with a medium budget. It’s easier to make a very small film with a low budget like Le Refuge or a big comedy like Potiche with big stars. It’s more difficult when you try to make something in the middle, something more difficult in commercial terms because you don’t know exactly what the film is going to be like.