I first met George Jaques while working on Death on the Nile, where he was appearing as one of the German soldiers in the opening First World War sequence.

It turned out that acting was only one part of what George was doing. He was also writing, producing and directing his own work, and after we got talking he asked whether I might be able to help him with a short film he was preparing called Cracked.

This was obviously a completely different scale of production from the feature films I was working on, but I was very happy to help. We sent a couple of the lads down to give George a hand and supplied the Special Effects equipment he needed without charging him for it.

Sometimes it is good to be able to use the resources and experience you have built up over the years to help somebody at the beginning of their own journey. George clearly had enormous ambition and was already doing far more than simply acting, so if we could take a little pressure off the production and help him get the film made, it seemed worth doing.

Cracked was only a three-minute short, but it was another step in George's development as a filmmaker. He has subsequently gone on to write, produce and direct considerably larger projects, so it is quite satisfying to look back and know that we played a small part in helping him along the way.