I called my agent and I said, "I'd love to Harry Potter." My agent says, "Yeah, so would every other director in town, including Steven Spielberg, who's probably going to do it." So I said, "Okay, I'll forget about it." I started writing another script, actually.

I remember getting the script in the mail and it was a letter from Warner Brothers saying "you must promise not to duplicate this script, to destroy..." I threw the letter away and I went to the computer and I started rewriting it - no one knew I was doing that.

I called my agent the next day and I said, "Look, I need you to get me the last meeting. I want all of these other directors to go in first and I want the last meeting." So I spent ten days re-writing the entire script.

I put the script down and I said, "I've rewritten the script - you know, free of charge, no strings attached, I just wanted you guys to see what I would do with the movie." I think that surprised them. In Hollywood, you know, no one will pick up a pencil without getting paid for it. And they had seen that I had taken these ten days and rewritten it. Whether it was good or bad or any....I think that made an impression on them.

And as a result I took that script and I gave it to Steve Kloves, the writer, and I said, "Look at these as my notes - you know, take what you want to use and we'll throw out the rest." Since then we've had a great relationship. Steve wrote both Harry Potter films and he's a director himself, but it was my way of saying to the studio, "I'm committed to this."

I wanted people to feel as if the film could've been made in 1955 or it could've been made in 2001. I wanted people to feel that way - that it had that sense of timelessness about it.

The first two weeks of that film we spent just telling the kids, I spent telling the kids, to keep their heads up, to keep their eyes open, not to look into a camera as they were doing a scene - just to get through it every day.

That can be extremely exciting or it can incredibly frustrating. I happen to have a terrific director doing the third film, Alfonso Cuaron, so I'm loving what I'm seeing him do every day with the film. Yet at the same time, I miss directing - I miss being out there with the actors, so I want to get back to it real soon.