Well, I guess so, otherwise I wouldn't take them. You know, I'm more interested in working with certain people, and these directors seem to be happy to deal with these characters and subjects. But I'm very versatile. I'm happy to do lighter movies; it just needs to make sense for me. I don't want to be in stupid movies; I just want to be in good movies. It's sometimes difficult to find comedies with substance and that lead you somewhere.

Yeah, I keep saying that we started by doing a movie together.

Yes, but for once in my life I was probably not brave enough. I thought the movie was when I read the story — and even when I watched it. There was no space for fiction; it was so real. The German actress who did it, Susanne Lothar, was extraordinary. The fiction I thought was missing in the film — I mean, nothing was missing for the film, only for me, because that's what the movie is about — it's representing this horrible, horrendous reality. And when I read [Haneke's] , I found all the possible imaginary space I required.

Hmm, no. Actually, I don't think it's ever happened among the many, many people I've worked with.

Yeah, exactly. But sometimes, you know, you have great auteurs. For instance, Stanley Kubrick, who was probably one of the greatest directors ever: I don't think he ever worked on original screenplays, which is something I heard about. He always wanted to adapt books or previously written stories. Stephen Frears is like that, too. He would never work on original material.

A script for me is just a tool. For more commercial movies, yes it is important, but if you work with great auteurs [they are less important]. For example, I worked with Hong Sang-soo, the Korean director, and he doesn't have scripts. I guess people like Wong Kar-wai don't have scripts either.

I loved doing that film. It was very, very funny. He really wrote it for me — I mean, as much as he 'wrote' it. He really imagined the story for me, and it was great.

It doesn't work that way. You don't decide, ' OK, I'm going to do a commercial movie in Hollywood'. Life is a bit more subtle than that, hopefully.

Don't believe the internet, there are so many films on there that I have never done. Not 100, I promise you. Maybe 60.