When asked about forging a career without a film degree, Nolan clarified. "Just to be clear, I didn’t go to film school because I couldn’t get into film school," he said to chuckles. "My father knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, but he advised me to get what he referred to as 'a real degree in a real subject,' so I’d have something to fall back on."



The director continued: "So I studied English because that was the academic subject that I was best at. But what I found when I studied it, is (that) it greatly informed my filmmaking process, my writing process. I started to become more at ease with a lot of the literary concepts that underline film criticism.”