Terence Davies, speaking last week at the Jesus College Media Society, doesn’t like people who have a problem with sight-reading at auditions, uncooperative actors or violence in movies. Having sent Martin Scorsese his first fan mail at the age of 55, Terence asked him at a dinner, “Why is there so much violence in your movies?” One could ask Terence Davies the same question.

Raging fathers reappear throughout his body of work – in Children (1976), the character played by the late Pete Postlethwaite in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and Denis Leary’s character in The Neon Bible (1995). Terence himself was witness to domestic violence as a child. His father could make the living room a place of terror with his seething presence. “I caught his attention when he was in one of his black moods. He kicked me from one end of the house to the other,” Terence recalls.

Born in Liverpool in 1945, Terence is the youngest of 10 children. He grew up amidst the city’s large Catholic, working-class community. “Life was much more ritualistic then. For instance, on a Sunday, everyone listened to the radio. I remember walking down our street - all the doors were open and you could hear they were all listening to ‘Round the Horn’.” Terence admits that this ritualistic aspect to life – its predictability, its unanimity – could be stifling yet he remembers it with fondness. He has said that the happiest time of his life was between the ages of 7 and 11, a period goalposted by the death of his father and enrolment in secondary school where he was bullied. At the age of 11 Terence also realised he was gay, “And have lived to regret it ever since.”

In the light of gay liberation, his words may sound like sacrilege. When probed further he exposes our fixation on appearance; a fixation which stalks not only the gay scene but most of our encounters with other people. “I attracted no attention as a boy – I wasn’t good-looking. And when I grew up it was the same. I look like an accountant.”  Even as a director his appearance has been cause for insecurities. “People like Martin Scorsese look like directors whilst I look like…” An accountant? “Exactly.”

Beneath the self-deprecation lies the memory of a ten-year-long stint in an accountancy firm. “It was like slow death.” Eventually reprieve came in the form of an acting course at the Coventry Drama School. Whilst there, Terence responded to the British Film Institute’s siren-call for scripts. He was successful and received a small amount of money from the BFI for shooting. “I hadn’t yet seen Bresson’s films, I didn’t know how to operate a camera – I learnt on the job.”

Only after filming Children did Terence embark upon a formal education in film-making. He took a directing course at the National Film School, arriving already half-formed as a director. Although he did not possess all the know-how, his abiding interest in the nature of the past, his signature use of music and ruminative style were already manifest in his first feature.

But there was still much to be learnt. For the first time Terence became acquainted with the European and avant-garde traditions – German expressionism, Robert Bresson, Greed. Terence remains indebted to Alexander Mackendrick (director of The Ladykillers), who taught him at the National Film School. “He would play a game where we would watch a scene from a film and then he would suddenly stop it and ask, ‘What’s the next shot?’” In this way Terence learnt to appreciate, and exploit, the interplay between formal choices and dramatic effect.

No stranger himself to financial ups and downs, Terence is readily sympathetic in the current cuts-and-reductions climate. During a talk at Anglia Ruskin in 2007, after seven years out of filmmaking because he couldn’t obtain backing, his future in cinema seemed unlikely.  However, he was soon to be approached by the BBC with the idea of making a film about Liverpool and its recent history. This resulted in Of Time and the City (2008), a new lifeline and jump in genre from feature to documentary.

And this year looks set to be a busy one. He is now in post-production for The Deep Blue Sea which stars Rachel Weisz and Simon Russell Beale. The film will be part of the centenary celebrations of the birth of another Terence, the playwright Terence Rattigan. Also, Davies is set to direct his first stage production at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London – Uncle Vanya.  Chekhov’s plays and Davies’s films invite comparison – the dramas arising out of domesticity, the significance of the little things. “He’s my favourite writer,” Terence asserts,“ it’s the poetry of the ordinary.”