“I prefer to find a ready-written piece of literature that's already great, and I snatch the idea. I find the writing process very lonely, very painful. I only started out writing because, at a young age, nobody would give me anything to work with. I was just earning my right to direct.”

"I think that for every movie I make, I always try to duplicate that feeling of purity and innocence that I got when I saw this movie," he said. "I bring in Western drama. I bring in metaphor. I bring in Jean-Luc Godard. Whatever I bring in to my own films, I am forever trying to update and recapture that feeling. I call it juice ? the juice of the film ? the thing that moves people, the thing that is untranslatable by words."

Now one of the world’s most renowned film directors, with multiple awards on his mantelpiece, Ang Lee grew up in Taiwan, where he went to the National Taiwan College of Arts.  He graduated in 1975, and then went to the US to continue his studies at the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign campus and then at New York University where he worked on Spike Lee’s student film.  He wrote a couple of scripts and directed his first film Pushing Hands in 1992, but it was with his next film The Wedding Banquet that he came to international attention.  Since then he has rarely missed a step, completing one award winning film after another.  His latest film Taking Woodstock is about to be released.  (July 2009)