Working with friends has always been important to you, are these relationships likely to continue with your new found feature film fame?

Yes, for sure. I’m planning to take a couple of key people with me onto Potter, because they are super talented and I couldn’t have done the work I’ve done without there help, and I see Potter as a continuation of much of the work we’ve been doing together.

Were you surprised to be asked to direct the latest Harry Potter installment?

I was really thrilled, and excited by the prospect. It’s the kind of scale of film I’ve wanted to make since I was 14. Since The Way We live Now I’d been getting film offers coming through, but none of them were that interesting, though I had done a lot of work getting a film version of Brideshead Revisited ready – though we just fell short of our budget.

How do you feel about this project?

I’m really looking forward to it, and am working my way through all of the books, and starting to get a bit addicted to the world which is fantastic and wonderfully realised.

The whole of the UK was gripped with Harry Potter fever when the books were first released, did you rush to the bookshops with the masses?

I hadn’t read a Potter book until earlier this year, because I was so busy making stuff or reading other scripts, so it has been a real pleasure to catch up with everyone else over the past weeks and months.

What is your biggest film ambition?

To stay true to the best stories I can find. And to make big movies next to much smaller more intimate films – but to give both everything I’ve got.