Spiders, needles, blood, pain and breaking wind in public.

When I was little, a couple of rapes took place in Glasgow. I remember my mum saying to walk in the middle of the pavement, and to this day I am very conscious of where I am.

Not waking up in the morning.

Rats. We had one swim up our loo recently, it was horrific.

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, 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.

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

I think they have no duty. But we do have the opportunity, not to change the world, but to make people think differently.

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.

I didn’t think anything actually [before],” he nods. “And now I ask many questions. Because I don’t know what I will do in such a situation.