I like to make films about people who changed the lives of others and asserted human dignity.

In the late 1940s, there weren't any pop stars, and TV didn't exist.

I have no great interest in being remembered as a great creative filmmaker.

Ben Kingsley was my ideal choice for Gandhi, and he really lived up to the expectations of an international audience. I did not find any Indian actor worthy to perform the role of Gandhi in the early Eighties, though there were brilliant performers like Naseeruddin Shah in India.

I lived in an atmosphere where Mama brought 60 Basque refugee children to England during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

There are things I want to say: They are very important to me, and, not being a writer, I do it through movies.

I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.

My father thought Gandhi was a great man. I suppose subconsciously, consciously even, I was aware that I wanted to please him and Ma, so I thought doing something like 'Gandhi' would be phenomenal.

My family were liberal with a small 'l' but passionately doers. I wanted to be a doer.

Throughout my life, I always remember that consideration of people who were less fortunate than we. We lived in an atmosphere of awareness, and we certainly did not live a life whereby we ignored, or felt that we could ignore, that which was in evidence around us.