You are 35 years old. Your girlfriend is Rosamund Pike, your first film was nominated for four Oscars and your second has been picked to open the Venice Film Festival. How do you possibly cap that?

For Joe Wright, the director of the quintessentially British period pieces Pride and Prejudice and the forthcoming Atonement, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, the answer is obvious: Hollywood, mental illness and emigration.

“I’m working on two scripts at the moment and slowly making my way back to the present day,” says Wright. “They’re both Working Title projects and one of them is also with Dreamworks. It’s a US tale of schizophrenia and homelessness in downtown Los Angeles with Jamie Foxx. My plan is to take all my [British] crew and most of my company of actors over to LA on a big adventure.”

The money from Wright’s first American jaunt will help to finance his other project, a small British film called Perfect Wonder . It’s from a script by Marianne Jean-Baptiste and tells the story of West Indian emigration to Britain in the 1950s. Baptiste became the first Black British actress to receive an Oscar nomination (for Secrets and Lies in 1996) but has since moved to California, complaining about the dearth of decent roles for black women in the UK.

Writing a film about the Windrush generation is one way to solve that.

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• DVD

• Oscars

• Bollywood

Editor's choice

• The top 10 fan versus band scuffles
• Mamma Mia! The first review
• Times critics' 20 best films for kids