"Jane Eyre" Director Cary Fukunaga on Homelessness and the Raw Sexual Magnetism of Judi Dench

At the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Cary Fukunaga emerged as the belle of the ball, the kind of promising young talent the festival is meant to catapult, when his first feature, "Sin Nombre," a harrowing, haunting tale of unexpected beauty and unflinching realism, took home both the Directing Award and Excellence in Cinematography Award, while landing Fukunaga a three-picture deal with Focus Features.

Two years later, on the lip of releasing his second effort, a gothic, chillingly sensual adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" starring Mia Wasikowska, Judi Dench and Michael Fassbender, the handsome young director—after a fair amount of giddiness over the coolness of a fancy Coke bottle found in the minibar—takes a seat on the balcony of his Four Seasons hotel suite and marvels at how much and little has changed since the last time Popcorn Biz saw him at this same locale during promotion for "Sin Nombre." Fukunaga says he's spent the last two years in a whirlwind of media and moviemaking, moving from hotel to hotel, publicity obligation to film set and back again, landing intermittently on friend's couches.

"I was still doing promotion up until two weeks before shooting 'Jane Eyre' and I'm homeless at the moment," he reveals. "I had an apartment in London until two days after [the' Jane Eyre'] shoot. Then I packed up and sent my stuff to the Focus Features office. They're my Manhattan mini-storage."

While the constant stream of work is a dream come true for any independent filmmaker, it's kept Fukunaga for focusing on writing potential future projects that have been simmering in his brain for several years, including (and in order of important in his mind) a sci-fi love story, an adaptation of a historical non-fiction novel about a train heist during the Civil War and a movie musical that could feature a score by Beirut and Arcade Fire.

"I'm not Quentin Tarantino; I can't write on the road," he shrugs when asked about his procrastination. "I need a little space I can just disappear into. That's probably what I'll do in the spring; find some quiet place, some nice mothering woman to take care of me and feed me soup while I write and cry like a baby," he smiles.

With his sophomore effort arriving in theaters, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to ask about the film's leading man, Michael Fassbender, and his uncanny ability to get everyone, even, it has recently been reported, horses, hot and bothered. So does Fukunaga have a "Fassbender Boner" like everyone else?

"I don't know," he laughs. "I definitely didn't find myself getting hard-ons during dialogue scenes, I'll tell you that. But Dame Judi [Dench]. Talk about 'boner!' She's so cool," he coos. "When I moved into my flat in London, she gave me a gift. It was the last photograph of Steve McQueen before he died. And Steve had signed it for her! She gave it to me, just pulled it off her wall and gave it to me. That's the kind of person Judi Dench is."

"Jane Eyre" opens March 11.