My Beautiful Laundrette

“These are two incredible queer cinema films. One of the great early performances, Daniel Day-Lewis. Stephen Frears, Stephen Frears is like one of these incredible kind of shapeshifters, the way his career kind of just ebbs and flows. And we saw this 35mm in Munich and it was a double billing with Hero.”

“I wasn't even thinking of Stephen Frears who I think is amazing and this is My Beautiful Laundrette, which was so important when it came out. Oh my god, it was like seeing every uncle and auntie I knew but you wouldn't dare put it on screen. It's like so loving and so violent. It made me fall in love with London. My Beautiful Laundrette, oh my god, I don't know why that makes me cry.”

“Wait a minute, My Beautiful Laundrette. One of the first films I worked on in Hollywood, I was assistant costume designer to Richard Hornung on The Grifters, and it was directed by Stephen Frears, who directed this film also. I've done a couple of films, Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood, with Daniel Day-Lewis, and I have to say the whole time I was working with Daniel on There Will Be Blood, I never once related that was the same actor that played this part.”

“This is My Beautiful Laundrette and the reason I chose that is very personal. Of course, the film was, in my opinion, very ahead of its time for all sorts of things. Quite political. It was about race, it was about the gay community... Hanif Kureishi is a really good mate of mine. Stephen Frears, who directed it, his father was my landlord in my very first flat. And then, of course, the other person in it is Daniel Day-Lewis, who I’m a very, very close friend of.”

“My Beautiful Laundrette. This stars a young Daniel Day-Lewis, before he was a really big star, and it’s about him having a gay relationship, a gay romance, with a younger, closeted Pakistani man in London. I am eight years old at that point and my aunt said, “You should watch My Beautiful Laundrette,” because we had read about it. It had gotten good reviews. Stephen Frears directed it, the great Stephen Frears. I do believe it ends up getting nominated for Best Original Screenplay.”