French movie mogul LUC BESSON's first teachers thought he was weird because his best friends were sea creatures.

The director spent much of his early life underwater with his parents, who were divers - and never had time to make human friends.

He says, "I have a lot of friends in the ocean. When I was seven I lived in Greece and I had two friends, one was an octopus and the other was a Moray eel... I'd see my two friends every day and we became very close.

"When I got to Paris at 10 years old and told everyone in school about my friends, everybody took me for crazy. They said, 'Is he nuts or what?'"

But Besson still goes diving when he needs a little peace in his life: "I feel comfortable in the water, that's for sure. Diving is like going to the moon.

"When you're a kid you want to be an astronaut and go to the moon or Mars and suddenly, at five years old, I'm doing it because you put the tank on your shoulders and you have no gravity."