Michael Winterbottom: ‘Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake’

‘If you get a chance to eat, then you should eat: you never know when the next meal is coming in my business’: Michael Winterbottom. Photograph: Clara Molden/Camera Press

I grew up in a small bungalow on a big housing estate on the edge of Blackburn. My mum was a teacher; my dad was a draughtsman in a factory that made television sets. Everything about my childhood was ordinary.

Blackburn’s Unit Four cinema was a scruffy place. In my teens, I went to its fortnightly foreign-language film screenings religiously. I was always desperate to escape, and these films briefly transported me all over the world.