When I was doing Twilight there was a moment when it was snowing and hailing in the middle of the set and I couldn’t finish shooting the scene, so I went behind a tree and cried for like 30 seconds and came back and then went ‘right we’re going to do this and this’. On that film I never went over budget, never went over schedule, never fired people or yelled at people, nothing. But I get told that I’m emotional and difficult and cried on sets.” She laughs. “Listen I’ve been on sets where male directors have fired the crew, gone over schedule by a month, two months, even three, gone over budget by millions, come in unprepared, not even had a shot list, yelled and got into physical fights with people or, you know, brought hookers to set… No one says they’re difficult. Or I’ve also seen a big man, a former football player, who cried on set and you know what happened? People gave him a round of applause and said he’s so sensitive… If somebody says there’s not a gender bias, that there’s not a double standard, then they do not have their eyes open.”
Does she believe that double standard has had a knock-on effect on her career? “I said in print after Twilight came out that I’d love to do a superhero movie – did anyone call? Not one person, but we won best action sequence at the MTV awards and Twilight had just made $400m (£257m). Let’s just admit that any guy who’d done that every studio would have called them and been like ‘lets do a three-picture deal. What’s the next movie you want to make?’ For me it was radio silence. I refused to give up so I called up about a script I’d loved with loads of action sequences and said I’d love to meet on it and they came straight back and said ‘no we want a guy’. The guy they eventually hired had no box office close to what I’d done but they wanted a guy because it was action.”