King Charles singles out Hollywood hit during candid chat with award-winning producers

King Charles spoke to Christopher Nolan and his wife Emma Thomas, who directed and produced Oppenheimer respectively, as the couple received honours at Buckingham Palace

King Charles declared he likes the blockbuster Oppenheimer - to the delight of its director and producer.

The monarch made the remark during a candid chat with its producers Christopher Nolan and his wife Emma Thomas as they received honours at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday.

Thomas, 53, told reporters: "He'd seen Oppenheimer, and he liked it, so that was very gratifying to hear." Thomas last year became the first British woman to win the Oscar for Best Picture as Oppenheimer triumphed at multiple award ceremonies.

And now Thomas and her 54-year-old husband Nolan, whom she married in 1997, have received a damehood and knighthood respectively for their services to film.

Discussing their conversation with Charles, Nolan said: "It was very nice that he knew our work and was aware of it, and, yes, he was hoping that I would take this as encouragement to do more of it."

Thomas has produced all of Nolan's films, including Inception in 2010 and Interstellar in 2014. The biopic of American theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War, marked the first time the couple had won the best picture Oscar and best film Bafta.

Thomas said: "What I was really thrilled by is the fact that I've heard anecdotally since about lots of younger people having their first experience of this story on the big screen, and then delving deeper and doing more of their own research into the events that we portrayed."

The couple, who have four children, met while studying at University College London (UCL), with Nolan introducing Thomas to the university's film society, where he was president and produced short films.

Asked what his advice for budding filmmakers was, Nolan replied: "Find a good partner. We met on the first day of university at UCL and we've been making films ever since.

"The only other useful advice I've really thought of is to stick to your guns. If you have something unique to say, just keep at it and try to find an outlet for that."

Since marrying, the couple have co-founded and run a production company, Syncopy, which has been behind many of their blockbusters.

Nolan said his partnership with Thomas had been "incredibly important", adding they had been able to "achieve so much more together than we would have been able to individually".