Sam Mendes Quotes

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.

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

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I want to inspire, and be inspired.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I don't think good and evil are polarized.

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.

I like throwing snowballs at small children.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.