Q: What initially attracted you to this film?

A: The money! I was broke and I desperately needed a job! No it was just a fantastic story, one that I had read about in the paper when it originally happened and I thought ‘that would make a terrific film’. But I didn’t do anything about it, so when the producers contacted me a year later and asked me if I was interested I immediately was because I knew that it was a really strong story. It seems to have everything: drama, humour, character. I also thought that when you first hear about it, it sounds like a traditional English comedy, which is fantastic, but it also seems to be a very modern story. It’s about celebrity, overnight celebrity, becoming famous for no good reason, and nowadays we’re surrounded by reality television, ‘Big Brother’, instant pop stars, so it seemed a very modern and appropriate story for our time. They’re an ordinary person one minute, and on television the next. So I thought it was more than just an excuse for a good comedy, it had something to say as well.

Q: So did you have your cast in mind when taking on the project?

A; No I didn’t, but when I thought about it I very quickly realised that Helen and Julie would be a great double act. I knew that they had never worked together before and when we spoke to their agents we discovered that they had always wanted to, and it seemed a really good opportunity to do just that.

Q: You appear to have cast Helen and Julie against type too, with Helen playing the more outgoing role and Julie taking on a quieter personality – what were your thoughts behind that decision?

A: Yes, I’m glad you spotted that. It was quite deliberate. I was worried that Helen’s character could come across as irritating or just too full-on unless you had an actress who could show her vulnerability, and Julie’s character might seem a bit miserable unless we could find an actress who could find the humour in it. So it occurred to me that if I cast them the wrong way round as it were, they could both then find the added dimension in their characters.

Q: Did their names help you get the rest of the cast on board?

A: Well we had Helen and Julie first, and it definitely helped as it showed the seriousness of the project, but I think that when you’re handing out really great parts to women over the age of forty then everybody is very keen. There are not many parts like that for women of that age, and if you are a woman in that group, you are just sick and tired of playing the wife. So there were plenty of contenders.

Q: This film has a distinctly British feel about it, how do you think that will go down in the States?

A: Better than here I think. They seem to love it in America, we’ve done some testing and a couple of screenings out there. I think it’s more the idea of very conservative English characters being naughty that plays terribly well in America.

Q: Word has it that you were a little nervous about filming the nude scenes – was it the celebrity factor that made you hesitant?

A: I was nervous because the actors were nervous. And so you think ‘Oh God this is going to be difficult’ and you know there were ten actresses and only one of me so I knew that they could gang up on me at any time. Myself and the crew offered to go naked during the shoot, to put them at ease, but they actually begged us to keep our clothes on! They had enough to worry about without having looking at us.

Q: So how were they once the clothes were off and the cameras were rolling?

A: Some of the actresses got together just before we shot that section and got terribly drunk with some of the real women and promised them that when they were doing their naked shot they would go completely naked whether I needed them to or not. So even if it was just a close up of their face they would stand there completely naked because the real women had. They promised them that they would have the same experience. Actually that made it quite interesting as they were standing there completely naked even though they could have had a swimsuit on or have been wearing a robe in some of the shots, so that kind of added to the stakes. But they were all terribly good at it. Surprisingly many of them were doing it for the first time. I mean Julie and Helen had been naked before, but I think many of the others hadn’t.

Q: Helen’s renowned isn’t she?!

A; Yeah she is, but she was still nervous. I think the only one who didn’t look at all nervous was Annette Crosby. When you get to seventy, who cares? She didn’t seem phased about it at all.

Q: After ‘Saving Grace’ and ‘Calendar Girls’, you’re going to be known for making quintessentially British films. Are you planning to continue in the same direction?

A: I’m only ever going to make films about middle aged women being naughty. That’s all I can do, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else. Well, Brenda Blethyn became a drug dealer in ‘Saving Grace’, Helen and Julie and the others go naked in ‘Calendar Girls’. I can’t think what I’m going to do next.

Q: Well, someone has said to me that you were chatting to Cameron Diaz recently?

A: Ah, yes. That’s true. I was in New York last week meeting her about a film.

Q: She’s not middle aged!

A: No, well actually yes she is, she’s forty-eight years old, it’s just incredibly good make up. Enormous amounts of computer graphics go in to making her look like that! (laughs). Yeah well I’m hoping to do a film with her in the new year.

Q: Can you tell us about that?

A: It’s an American film, I can’t tell you anything about it, but it’s going to be brilliant! What I like to do, and I think this will be the same, is mix comedy and drama. I get bored if it’s all just jokes and if it’s all too serious then I get kind of too flippant.

Q: Well that’s the same kind of thing that you had with ‘Cold Feet’.

A: Exactly. I can’t do anything unless it has both, it needs to be funny and sad. And I think that the Cameron Diaz film is another one of those, it has funny bits but it’s also touching. That’s what I like to do, otherwise I get terribly bored.

Q: That should be quite exciting for you and probably quite different as well ?

A: Well it’s not so different, it’s a good story, good actors, still true to life. So that is all the same, whether they live in America or Britain doesn’t really make much difference; they’re all people really.

Q: There are obvious comparisons being made between yourself and Stephen Daldry, who had the great success with ‘The Hours’ following the surprise smash hit ‘Billy Elliot’. How do you feel about that association?

A: I’m the old Stephen Daldry! I’d prefer to be the new Sam Mendes I think. But I think it’s great that there are plenty of directors who are having international success. I think it’s really great. Luckily, Americans still think you’re terribly clever if you have an English accent! The reality is we’re not, but we can get away with sounding terribly clever.

Sam, Stephen, myself and others, we all started in theatre. I think it’s very good background training, working with actors, which is what it’s all about. Many directors that come up through the ranks these days have done lots of commercials and a lot of music videos but they don’t really know actors. If you have done low-budget theatre, which we all started in, all you’ve got is actors, you can’t dazzle your audience with fancy camera work and explosions. You just have to have really good performances. So I think it trains your mind to think that way.

Q: I understand that some of the proceeds from the film are going to go to Leukaemia Research Fund. What do you have planned?

A: Well, we paid the real women a great deal of money to buy the film rights from them and all that money is going to Leukaemia. I have to say those women have worked full time since 1998, when they started doing the calendar. They have worked full time and none of them have received a single penny for it. They have raised nearly a million pounds now, and there have been plenty of opportunities for them to take the money for themselves but they haven’t, they’ve resisted it. They did a commercial for soap powder like we show in the film, and gave all that money to charity, plus all the money from the film. Disney and Penguin books are publishing a new version of the calendar to coincide with the film and a big chunk of that money is going to charity. There are going to be screenings up and down the country that the WI are helping organise where all the money will go to Leukaemia so hopefully we should double what they have already raised.

Q: And did they get that sofa in the end?!

A: Oh they really did and there’s a whole new cancer wing at the local hospital which has all been paid for by them.

Q: And finally, here we wanted to know why all the Dames didn’t get involved, and whether or not Judi Dench and Maggie Smith are upset that they missed out on the opportunity to bare all to the nation?!

A: (Laughs) I know, we’re missing them aren’t we ?! We did talk to Judi about doing the film but she wanted to take six months off just as we were beginning to start work on it, so she put herself out. I just didn’t think Maggie Smith was believable as a woman from Yorkshire. I think she’s far too wonderful and eccentric and enigmatic to be right for the film. Ooh who else did we turn down . . . Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Martine McCutcheon. They all wanted to do it but I said ‘No! You’re too young!’. But I could have made the film twice, I really could. I mean there were fantastic actresses who I’ve wanted to work with all my life, some of whom have been nominated for Oscars, won BAFTAs, and I had to say ‘I’m sorry I can’t find a part for you’. It was quite extraordinary, they were all so keen to do it, we could have kept going and going and going.

The funny thing was, finding the male actors – a lot of men turned us down because they said ‘Well, this part is a woman’s part, I’m playing the wife here, it’s a supporting role’

Q: Well John (Alderton) and Ciaran (Hinds) were superb.

A: Well they were great, and hats off to them for taking the roles, because some male actors were saying the parts weren’t big enough, and that they were just playing a supporting role, and the actresses loved it, because they felt they were getting their own back on men after all these years, because they were getting offered the kind of parts that they normally have to take, and vice versa.

Q: We at Cineworld wish you every success. It is a truly beautiful film. You deserve success in bucket loads. I took my daughter with me to see it we both laughed and cried. It is a very moving film.

A: Well thank you. Help us to persuade the world that it’s not only middle-aged women who will enjoy this but that everybody will.