M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan
Manoj Shyamalan, known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-American film director, screenwriter, producer and occasional actor known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots. His major films include the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense, the superhero drama thriller Unbreakable, the science fiction thriller Signs, the psychological thriller The Village, the fantasy thriller Lady in the Water, the natural thriller The Happening, the fantasy adventure film The Last Airbender, the sci-fi action-adventure film After Earth, the found-footage horror film...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 August 1970
CityMahe, India
CountryUnited States of America
The thing that's protected me creatively is that the movies have made profits.
I don't like to chase an audience. You can smell when someone is chasing an audience and it's not good.
I offer originality: you don't know what my films are like until you go to them. I think that's the reason I've been getting all this attention.
The first two movies I directed failed, when I was 21 and 23, and that was the greatest thing that could have happened.
I have a naive outlook on life. That's who I am.
For instance, 'The Sixth Sense' had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention.
I don't want to pretend I'm any cooler or smarter than I am.
I have worked hard and learnt that I have to make a decision - whether I am going to conform and protect myself or not. I chose not to.
Being insecure - I'm a master, a virtuoso - they can be handing me the keys to the kingdom and all I can think is, I hope I don't drop the key.
My secret to all casting, and specifically kids, is cast good human beings.
I love my stories being multi-layered, and coming at it from different angles, so that you don't understand the film's true emotional motivation until the very end.
When you say 'fear of the unknown', that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.
'The Exorcist' is the scariest movie ever made. It just felt dead-on real, like you were watching the existence of the devil.
There's a monster outside my room, can I have a glass of water?