Anthony Minghella

On cinema. I have always loved the odd intimacy cinema gives when you sit in the dark and enter a separate world - a dream in the dark. When I was a boy, the only culture really available on the Isle of Wight was cinema culture. There were 3 cinemas within a spit of my parents' café. Vernon Cook, the projectionist at the Ryde Commodore, used to let me into the projection room, and I decorated a whole room with cinema posters he gave me. That was the beginning of my love of film.

On making movies. My parents worked every single day of the year and the café was open from when I woke up to when I went to sleep at night. Our family kitchen was also the kitchen for the restaurant - which meant that every single event, every tragedy, every crisis, every failure, every piece of mischief, every regret - was played out in public. That was the way we lived.

Years later, rehearsing a quiet scene in Truly, Madly, Deeply with Juliet Stephenson and Alan Rickman, when we were surrounded by crew, camera tracks, lights and noise, I thought, I know this world so well - where the intimate and the private are played out in public.

And I know the sheer stamina that's required - working 20 hours a day. My early life equipped me for this - the terrible pathology of the work ethic - working all the hours we were able to. At the end of it, you just want to lie down and be left alone for ever.

On his family. I come from an Italian Catholic family, with a love of the "groaning board," where a good day is having the house crowded with people. 'If there's room for 30, there's room for 31,' my aunt would say. What I have inherited, oddly enough, is an enormous desire for solitude. I have a sort of agoraphobia - but of too many people, a fear of being exposed, and a great desire for quiet.

On his grandmother. Louisa Arcari was my maternal grandmother and I have never met anybody like her. She was the person who shaped the me of my childhood, and the person I became. Although unlucky in love herself, she was blessed by an indefatigable ability to love - to embrace everybody, irrespective of class or colour or creed. She was larger than life, volatile, funny, unabashed and marvellous, capable of alarming candour, intrepid curiosity, genuine empathy. Every so often, united in mischief, she and I would find a way to escape to the beach where I would trudge along beside her and she would tell me her view of the world - a quasi-religious spiritual education that had nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with the spirit. We were always in trouble afterwards, but it was worth every minute. Her attitude to life colours mine forever.

On his time at Hull University. A marvellous blossoming period. There I had access to the theatre, I had access to writing, and I went from being a rather disenchanted boy who would never write an essay, would never read a book - to someone who was never out of the library, who went to every lecture, every tutorial, and became the worst kind of slave to academia.

On winning Oscars. Within seconds of The English Patient winning 9 Oscars, someone pointed out that only 2 films in history had won more Academy awards - and asked if I felt this was the greatest success I was ever going to have. No sooner was I able to celebrate than I was having to consider the curse accompanying the blessing!

I don't know if I am going to be better because of having won, or would be worse had I not won. Obviously this film has had an enormously empowering result for me: it has opened every door I have ever hoped would be opened for me. But having every door opened is not necessarily useful, because one of the great galvanising energies in life is having to barge against doors which remain belligerently closed. I just hope I can use the advantages of having made a good film that has worked to help me be better, rather than to imagine I have peaked.

On religion, superstition and habit. I would not describe myself as religious, but I am extremely conscious of the fact that I was raised a Catholic - and the way I interpret the world is with a Catholic dictionary.

I am not superstitious, but I am extremely bound by habit. I have never come across anybody who lives such a disorganised life who is still so bound by repetitions. Whenever I go home to the Island, the first thing I do is walk to Quarr Abbey. Even when I was in the Sahara making The English Patient, I had a well-trodden "desert walk" which lassoed the experience of the film for me. I always have to find out what characterises an experience most pungently and quickly.

On being intrepid. In my real life, I am rather fearful and retiring, without much courage, but when I am working I feel the opposite - I am prepared to go anywhere, do anything. Filming Cold Mountain, I hung out of a helicopter to get overhead shots. In normal life, I couldn't even bear to be in a helicopter, but when shooting, I didn't give it a thought - despite breathtaking swoops with the side of the chopper open. It's as if the job is like an armour and a there's a battle to be fought.

On personal passions. In my adult life I developed passions- a passion for JS Bach; I probably don't ever go for more than 36 hours without hearing some of his music. And I've always been a huge fan of Portsmouth Football Club, and for years I have convinced myself that my own success or failure is inextricably bound up with theirs. Even in the Sahara, I had mail delivered by courier letting me know how they were doing in their struggle!

On his 50^th birthday. January 6 2004. I'm in uncharted waters - but it's my choice. As of my 50th birthday I am unemployed - or perhaps unemployable. Up to now, since I started writing professionally, there's always been a job ahead of me. But I knew I'd be coming out of Cold Mountain about the time of my 50^th birthday and it seemed a useful way of determining a change of direction. Whatever I do next I want to be born in this moment, rather than having been conceived some time ago.

On his wife. My life with Carolyn Choa has been the very best thing that ever happened to me. She has been a great companion for more than 20 years; that relationship has certainly been my best achievement. We are currently (Jan 2004) aiming to do a production of Madam Butterfly. Carolyn comes from a whole background of working in opera and of choreographing opera, and it would be such fun to do something together. Now we've converted a building in London to work in - so we both have a base to go to every day and don't have to make appointments to see each other - there will be more opportunities to work together and, most importantly, simply to be around each other.

On Madam Butterfly at the ENO and the Met. (November 2005) This was a wonderful, transforming experience - just to do something back in theatre to remind myself it was possible to work in a live environment - with music; and for Carolyn and I to work together and to go home together and go on an adventure together.

On chairing the British Film Institute. (2002-2007) This is a job I couldn't say no to... my father-in-law once said to me that there's no man worth his salt who doesn't give something back to society (He's a surgeon who gives a great deal of his time to Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.) So I saw the BFI job as a way of putting something back into the British film industry - and I owe a great deal to BFI.

I think the notion of film as an art form has been suffocated by film as a commercial function - the cost of releasing a movie has become so punitive that few films have wide enough appeal to justify the cost . Therefore the opportunities for people to collide with serious movies, with movies in other languages and from other times, are diminishing. BFI should be finding ways of turning younger people on to world cinema etc. That's what I see as the big challenge for me, and it's one I relish.

On his writing. The heart of dramatic fiction, where my work is, is the sense of plurality and so many points of view. In a few seconds you can move away from your own perception of the world and your own set of prejudices where you have a very small bank account: you have one small family, you have one life, you have one age, you have one colour, you have one creed - into places where you can inhabit many other viewpoints.

On adapting novels for film. Movies are experienced in real time, intended for public arenas. They must fill in what a novel can merely suggest, provide the whole face where the novelist may be content with an eyebrow, the room where the novelist need only describe a chair.

On making Breaking and Entering. 11 November 2006. I never intended to work on adaptations. After a trilogy of adaptations - The English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain, I have returned to original writing.

Making this small film in London has been remarkable - going back to a scale of film where you meet the whole crew - they all fit into one room, you can share a collective experience together, you all need to get along with one another - underlines the notion of reconciliation which is the centre of the story.

On using actors he's worked with before. It's wonderful to have a chance to work with people again - Juliette Binoche, Juliet Stevenson, Ray Winstone, Jude Law. I love these repeat relationships. The first time you work with someone, there's a lot of leeway and the pleasure of discovery. Second time round, there's the challenge of maintaining a relationship, exploring it more.

On being a film director. The noisy carnival craziness is a total contrast to the atmosphere of quiet study and research which is the writer's life. Making a film is essentially like being the conductor of an orchestra. No conductor imagines he is as good a cellist as the cello player, or as good a fiddler as the violinist; his job is not to play these instruments, but to bring the music from the instruments - and it is the same in film-making. My job is not to be a great actor or a great cinematographer, but to find ways of encouraging the artists to do their best.

I'll go anywhere in the world, as I have done, to make movies. I'm going to Africa next to make the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - writing the script with Richard Curtis. When film directors make movies in foreign countries, their challenge is to create a fictional landscape within the real one.

As told to ELIZABETH ADLAM in face-to-face interviews 1997-2007.