There is no hiding the fact I'm an avid Millwall fan.

I have spent the last five months obsessively working on Outlaw.

Two things revolutionised life: moving to the countryside and falling in love.

Two things revolutionised life: Moving to the countryside, and falling in love

I do show violence as entertainment. Clearly, I'd be a liar if I said I didn't.

I'm not making films for critics, I'm making films for people to go out and enjoy.

I don't want to die with regrets. I like living and experiencing and feeling the whole lot.

I understand working-class culture, tribalism and the ethos of violence, so I make films about these things.

This sounds really hokey, but I think Buddhism is the only religion that is genuinely peaceful, so I'd try to promote it in a contemporary society.

I've got a reputation for doing a certain type of film: lads' movies that glamorise violence. The more my reputation as a bad boy grows, the more my life moves away from that.

I think one of the luxuries of being a filmmaker is that you can ask questions but not necessarily have to answer them. Certainly, if I was a politician I'd need to come up with some answers.

And that doesn't cost any money, to have decent relationships and viable situations. What costs money is car chases and shoot-outs, so I always thought that the thing to work on was the characters.

I'm a good little middle-class boy. I live in Gloucestershire or Kensington. I don't exist in the war zone, but it's certainly not far away. I grew up in an area where it is a war zone - south London.

In my real life I live in the countryside, I walk a lot, I shoot clay pigeons, I don't get involved in the film business or anything, and then in my cinematic life, I think I am drawn to the dark side.

My mum is incredibly leftwing, and my dad was quite rightwing - no surprise they didn't stay together - and so I had two very conflicting political opinions as a child, neither of which I was interested in taking any notice of, being a sort of little reprobate.

I've always been terrified of violence which is probably why I keep making violent films - I'm trying to exorcise some demons or something. My mum ended up bringing me up on the edge of a big estate in south London, so I was on the periphery of violence - a lot of football violence and stuff because I was a Millwall supporter. So I've always had a very healthy fear of it, yet at the same time a fascination. I think in all of my films that's a really strong subtext... people who are terrified by violence but are yet compelled by it as well.

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