I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent. It's a political problem.

Well, I’ve completely reneged on that one and within a very short time, I think within three or four years.…Well, it has now been shown that it occurs very commonly in fishes, particularly cichlid fishes. So here’s another thing where my intuition was wrong.

Cancel culture: getting stuck on the discourse rather than looking at the system.

July 2018, when I married my third husband, Roger, after two years of proclaiming that marriage at 76 was stupid.

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

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.

Truffaut, Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, they were the great directors of the Nouvelle Vague. They found the freedom to make exactly the films they wanted. Chabrol was important because he was able to make very strong portraits of women and very complex portraits of women. He was very clever and he had a lot of joy and pleasure. He didn’t have some big theories about his work, he just enjoyed making films. I try to work like that.

The truth is that the actresses supposedly have to get operated on and go through cosmetic surgery.

No, I’m afraid of nothing, actually. Maybe there are some genres that I would not feel uncomfortable with. I’m not sure I’d be able to do a western or a science-fiction film, but you never know.

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.