one of the men you have worked closest with is ken loach.as had a fantastic career and has won prizes at cannes and all over the world. you and he, i think, are regarded as pioneers of and revolutionaries working with this idea of social realism, of using actors who are encouraged to extemporise, to be spontaneous, not to obsess about memorising scripts but to let drama unfold and live with the drama unfolding. how new was all of that and do you accept this notion that you set a trend that still matters to a great many film makers around the world ? well, i don't know, i don't see much sign of the trend now, frankly. i never thought of it like that. this all started for me as an actor and the terrible way actors are treated, were treated and still are to some extent, by everybody. i thought they had got everything wrong, everything wrong with their attitudes to screenplays, their attitude to lights and cameras. the actor was in the service of all of that, but i wanted all of that to be in the service of the actor. it is the audience that see