I learned that what I`m better at is making stuff lower down the radar. Actually, ideally not on the radar at all.

You don`t realize it, but often people are frightened of the director.

[His next project, Sunshine (2007)] We`re doing this film Sunshine (2007). In fact, we`re casting for it in a few minutes actually. It`s about a mission to the sun. It`s a sci-fi set in space. They`re flying a bomb to the sun and the bomb is like the size of Kansas, this immense bomb that they built in space. They`re flying it to reignite a section of the sun which is failing, but it`s really about a mission that went earlier, seven years earlier, and failed. So it`s sort of mystery of what happened. It`s quite big at the end, you get to meet the sun. Quite spectacular hopefully.

I don`t want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them. At this time of the year you think about awards and if you want to win one you think you should make serious films, but my instinct is to make vivacious films.

When I was making Sunshine (2007), it suddenly struck me: No director has ever gone back into space, with the exception of franchise directors. If you look at the record, you`ll find that`s true. I now know why.

I think I`m better at making films on my home turf, really. You learn from experience and I`ve learnt that through The Beach (2000/I). I love big movies, like Gladiator (2000), but I`m better at smaller films.

That`s what`s wonderful about actors sometimes, is that`s who we watch on the screen... Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they`re all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination. They make much better fodder for this kind of thing [interviews] than a director.

I want my films to be life-affirming, even a film like Trainspotting (1996), which is very dark in many ways. I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something`s been confirmed for them about life.