Waiting for Miranda July in the basement of Soho House, I'm not sure what to expect.Most actresses I meet are unmistakably actresses-outgoing,confident and very happy to be the centre of attention. When I finally meet her though, Miranda is much more like the characters she's written and played on screen- slightly awkward, shy; a bit uncomfortable being in the limelight. As soon as we start talking about her latest film she relaxes and is both open and articulate about her life,the movie and the future..

KA:You're an artist,a writer, an actress, a director-have you ever been pressured to focus on one medium only or have you always been able to experiment as you like?

MJ:Subtley, the culture encourages you to strike while the irons hot-and I'm never doing that-when there's interest in my film work I'm focused on the next thing-like right now I'm writing a novel- but I'm often writing down ideas for projects in other mediums while I'm working, so when it comes time to do my third movie I'm sure I'll have loads of notes from while I've been writing this novel.I definitely feel like if I wanted to have a great, big career it would probably be smarter to choose one medium, but this is a better life for me.

KA:You use you voice a lot in your last movie 'Me and You and Everyone we know' and in 'The Future' for the voice of PawPaw the cat- when did you discover you could use your voice as a tool like that?

MJ:When I was really little I used to play with my dad's tape-recorder a lot, and then I used my voice a lot in my performance background-I was making short movies for a long time before that first feature, but I was also making quite elaborate performances where I was playing all the different parts; I didn't do voices in a super expert,charactery way, but I was definitely doing dialogues with myself and I think that made being PawPaw seem plausible to me.

KA:Do you have a cat?

MJ:No-I'm a cat person but my husband came with a dog.

KA:In the film your character Sophie talks about being wild- do you feel the way we live our lives these days is unnatural,that we're too tamed by domesticity and urban life and are losing touch with this inner wildness we all have?

MJ:Probably-I think I was thinking myself-I got married while I was writing this script-and I was working through this idea of, was I too wild?Not in the sense of like, a party girl,but-the difference between living inside and living outside in the dark feeling that you were destined to be alone forever, and that's what I think of as wild; perpetual aloneness-you'll never be domesticated because you're just fundamentally lost to the darkness. And then inside its the warmth of home and family and I think getting married was like, OK, I'm signing up-I'm capable and worthy of that-so some of that was me. I'm never autobiographical literally, but I think that came out of those feelings.

KA:In the film Jason and Sophie switch off their internet to make the most of their time- I found this a really interesting concept as I constantly find myself torn between loving the internet and thinking its an amazing source of inspiration, to loathing it and feeling like I'm wasting half my life online.

MJ:I feel the same way- there is amazing stuff, but I can say that the level of inspiration I get from the internet is nothing compared to what I can do without it, you know?Just me sitting, thinking things up is actually pretty powerful and interesting. I've come to think it's totally unhelpful for the creative process, but as an independent film maker I'm totally indebted to it for making grass roots connectivity possible-I don't see my work as ever having massive marketing budgets so its hard for me-I'm not a luddite, I fully make use of it-I feel like the best we can do is actively wrestle with it.

KA:What do you want from your future?

MJ: I used to have big dreams which now I've come close enough to -nothing ever seems big once you're in it-but now I'm.. not less ambitious, but I think, God, if I could just keep being allowed to do this, that would be great! That seems actually quite ambitious.I thought I might always want bigger and better and that turned out not to be true.I think I began to realise that this creative freedom that I have depends on keeping things in a certain sphere.

KA: And you're writing a novel now?

MJ:Yeah,there's not much I can say about that but I do have a book thats coming out right now called It Chooses you.

You can buy Miranda's book here from next month.

Run-Riot has contributed to The Future facebook app helping you plan fun things to do in your future.

I can't resist including one of the tracks Miranda dances to in The Future, its by a band called Beach House and is called Master of None. It completely stuck in my head, and has an appropriately Halloweeny music video: