When I Read Andrew Motion's Biography, I

I Think That The Romantic Impulse Is In All Of Us And That Sometimes We Live It For A Short Time, But It's Not Part Of A Sensible Way Of Living. It's A Heroic Path And It Generally Ends Dangerously. I Treasure It In The Sense That I Believe It's A Path Of Great Courage. It Can Also Be The Path Of The Foolhardy And The Compulsive.

The Studio System Is Kind Of An Old Boys System And It's Difficult For Them To Trust Women To Be Capable

I Had This Spooky Psychological Thing About 'the Piano' Before It Began, Which Was How Everybody Was Going To Go Nuts On The Set. Because A Film Tends To Set Up The Way People Are Going To Behave.

Eight Years Ago, I Was Drawn Into Keats's World By Andrew Motion's Biography. Soon I Was Reading Back And Forth Between Keats's Letters And His Poems. The Letters Were Fresh, Intimate And Irreverent, As Though He Were Present And Speaking. The Keats Spell Went Very Deep For Me.

The Piano Lesson' Is Very Sophisticated, Easily The Most Adult Or Complex Material I've Attempted. It's The First Film I've Written That Has A Proper Story, And It Was A Big Struggle For Me To Write. It Meant I Had To Admit The Power Of Narrative.