Sam Mendes Quotations

I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.

I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself.

There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

Thank God I don't live in Los Angeles. I think if you're there the whole time it just gets out of proportion and you lose touch completely with reality.

I don't think good and evil are polarized.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character.

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.

I think with Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, people are much more open to something that is different.

One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films.

The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.

For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.

I don't think of it as a competition - which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.

I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing a Bond movie.

I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.

Obviously, there's a good bit of irony to that scene, ... A lot of what began in that first war (in 1991) can be extrapolated to what we're seeing today. I think those remain issues we should be talking about, even arguing about.

I'd like to think there's a huge interest out there because it's part of our daily life.

I don't think anyone realized how important that war was,

He really went from being a boy to being a man. It happened to him during the shooting of the movie, so a lot of it surprised me and I was really thrilled with what he came up with.

It always gets worse as you get older. You get more nervous, there's more to lose. He's got to live up to being Paul Newman.

I think that's a wonderful thing when there's somebody at the top of their game but they still want to test themselves.

People are capable of good and bad. As long as we continue perpetrating these absurd two-dimensional stories that everything is black and white - you're either good or bad - then the longer we'll misunderstand how many interesting stories you can tell in the space that exists between the two.

We did ask, ... And luckily, instead of saying, 'Well, maybe, if you make a few adjustments,' there was some intelligent person at the Pentagon who flat-out said, 'No way.' Which is what you want, because there are lots of stories about them saying yes, then at the last minute wanting changes and, before you know it, everything's compromised.

You have to have a secret... There is a hidden movie in all the best films. The secret is in every frame... in a good movie, there is always a shadow movie underneath the text, which allows the film to float above reality.

You do things bit by bit. That's the only way to play something really original, where the details stand out. You're not just showing us a cliched, generic character that you've seen before.

Violence is something that's very deliberately chosen - who sees it, the effect it has on the person watching, and the person performing the act of violence is more important than the violence itself. It's not about a gore-fest or how much blood you can show.

Everything about that war seemed so far away, ... The media never really was allowed in. All you'd see were these tiny little bombs like they were hitting toy towns. There was no sense that this was actually a war, that there was a human toll.

As I got everything wrong at the same time-costume, design and performance-it made it easier in a way, because I could see the film I didn't want to make.

There's no such thing as speech that is free.

They thought the book was evil and a bad advertisement for the US Marine Corps.

There'll always be a section of a war movie that gets people pumped up in the same way there will always be men who will want to go to war, ... There is something that entices them there, that can be found in no other walk of life.

It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.

It's very hard doing a period movie. You have to do everything, from the streetlamps to covering up the road markings. Every bystander has to be in period costume. You have to plan very carefully.

I'm interested in those personal stories, not taking a political stand.

I'm completely amazed and delighted. I kept my fingers crossed it would get good critical reaction, but the real surprise is that it's crossed over into the mainstream so comprehensively. I wasn't expecting that.

I froze for a bit, in truth-for about six months after the Oscars... There were lots of scripts landing on my desk.

In terms of being an outsider in America and having a certain type of objectivity to a degree, there were a few times I thought to myself: What on earth am I doing here? I'm a Brit making a movie so firmly set in the States!

I am not a master-class director. I am not a teacher. I am a coach. I don't have a methodology. Each actor is different. And on the film set, you have to be next to them all.

I don't want to tell people what to think about war, ... I just want them to think about it.

I still can't quite believe it. Although there was something about the fact that it was a first-time writer, a first-time producer, and a first-time director all at the same time.

If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.

I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.

I like throwing snowballs at small children.

Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.

I am not a master-class director. I am not a teacher. I am a coach. I dont have a methodology. Each actor is different. And on the film set, you have to be next to them all.

When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.

You're in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don't.

One of the reasons I loved working with Tom is people feel they know who he is... I think working with an actor who the audience already has a relationship with actually helps you in a film like this.

Every Bond is different and every generation needs a different Bond and it's been able to move with the times.

All I know is that I operate by going out to each of them and trying to learn the territory in which they operate. My language to each of them has to suit their brain.

Children make you confront your own childhood. Which I think is common. Suddenly you're remembering your own parents as parents, not to mention the fact that you're confronted by them as grandparents. So you also have that terrible shock, a mirror image of your own. You suddenly seem to be so helpless in the face of young children. And you think, "How did you ever bring up me?"

You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me.

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next, and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

The moment you have kids, you are prey to judgment, but you also become a judge. You find yourself going, "Can you believe what she did with such-and-such?" at school.

Kevin and Annette... I wanted them to do it together. They clearly wanted to work with each other.

Now Im back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.

The importance of rehearsal is maybe you want to talk about how the scene's going to be designed, how it's going to be staged, all of those things. It's all about preparation, and deciding what mutually you don't want to do, rather than necessarily what you do.

Learn to say, “I don’t know the answer.” It could be the beginning of a very good day’s rehearsal.

The joy of a road movie is its very simple narrative nature, which is that you know you're going to go through different places and you're going to meet new people. At the same time, you have to not make it feel too obvious and too crudely episodic.

I want to inspire, and be inspired.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

If you're doing a classic play, where if you do a Chekhov, you do the words as written. You can't do that with a novel; you have to do your version of the words as written.

I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.

I've directed bits of action and so I know that it's long and it's very detailed. Editing action is a good deal more exciting than shooting action. Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.

There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work.

Politicizing of kids starts with pregnancy, of course. You shouldn't be drinking wine. You can't be smoking, either. The poor woman is poked and prodded and touched and obsessed over.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase. But that's part of the pleasure of doing it, pushing yourself in new directions.

There have been screenwriters who I'm sure would gladly kill me, because I've been very fast and loose with their work, because I felt like it wasn't up to my high standards. I would push and pull it on set, and make changes all the time. But then when you're working with an original screenplay, my theater instincts kick in, and I suddenly become very keeper-of-the-words.

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond.