[on favorite films] I've always been a film lover - that's why I've always wanted to write music for films. But if I had to choose three films: Barry Lyndon [1975], Chinatown [1974] and The Godfather [1972]. And in animation it would be The Jungle Book [1967], 101 Dalmatians [1976] and all the Tex Avery films. [2016]

[on his best experience] Working with Roman Polanski. He loves music so much, and he gives total freedom to his composer. This is pretty amazing. His desire is for the composer to be completely free and bring new ideas. He's greedy about it; he's so excited when you play him a piece of music that surprises him. He has no fear. I've done his last three films [Ghost Writer, Venus in Fur and Carnage], and we're working on a new one soon. He doesn't use any temp music ever. He doesn't need a crutch. (...) It's become the poison of film music, and I wish producers would prevent this from happening. It completely kills the world of creation, of imagination, that the composer can bring to a film. If the composer is there to bring something new, the temp track can only kill it, because after two or three times of listening to a sequence with the same music, you're hooked. It's the way the brain works. So can you imagine after 100 times? The challenge is to seek something else. That's why I love Wes Anderson, that's why I love David Fincher, that's why I love Polanski, because they want to look for something else. [2016]

It was the songs from 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book. But also I remember there was a beautiful melody which Alex North wrote for the Kubrick film Spartacus. When I was a kid I would always hum it. Later I heard Bill Evans do it as a jazz piano piece and I recognised it: it had stuck with me. [on his early love of music from films]

It's not unusual to have only three weeks to score a picture. And that's three weeks from signing on to finishing the last recording session. That's how I did The Queen and, more recently, it's how I did The Imitation Game.

Funnily enough, almost at the same time that the Hollywood career started to ascend, I received two major awards for Best Score in Europe: the Silver Bear in Berlin, and the Cesar in France. And suddenly it made sense that the stars were aligned at the same time here and there. I still have not gotten an award here, so I still have a long way to go! I think Maurice Jarre had three, and Michel Legrand had two or three. Gabriel Yared had one. So, I have to work a little bit.

Over the past 15 years, I've been able to build a voice, something that looks like me. I don't know if it's a "new" voice as some say, it's not within my ability to say - but I write what I like! So it's "me". I come from France, and I've worked here, and in England, and Spain, and I'm not going to dump the past 15 years of my life when I come to Hollywood. I will still improve by doing a European movie once in a while, because there's a different approach to film scoring. Even a film with a small budget - I don't care, as long as I can be creative. And being creative is the way to move forward.