The fiendishly dark and officiously comic Kafka (1991) was such a dramatic departure from his debut feature that critics dismissed it as pretentious. His next feature, King of the Hill (1993), a highly accessible coming-of-age drama told through whisky-coloured filters was again attacked as sentimental and trite.

During The Underneath (1995), which Soderbergh considers his worst film, he almost decided to give up film making altogether. Instead he turned to much smaller projects, and shot the brilliant Gray’s Anatomy (1996) with Spalding Gray giving an 80 minute monologue. Almost concurrently to this he wrote, directed, edited and stared in Schizopolis, one of the most adventurous US films of the past twenty years which, like his previous four films, failed to find an audience. Proving once more that he is unable to make the same sort of film twice, 1998’s Out of Sight finally saw him return to the high-brow mainstream, playing well at the box office and enjoying ecstatic reviews.

With Out of Sight you made a significantly shift towards mainstream film making. Was this a deliberate choice?
Not consciously… I got a call from Universal saying they would send me a script. It played to the things I do well, so of course I turned it down. Casey (Silver) rang me from Universal and stressed how rare it was to get a good studio script and that I’d be mad to say no. Cameron Crowe and Mike Newell turned it down, so I did it - Clooney was already attached.