Sam Mendes
Sam Mendes
Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for directing the comedy-drama film American Beauty, which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the crime film Road to Perdition, and the James Bond films Skyfalland Spectre. He also is known for dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret, Oliver!, Company, and Gypsy. He directed an original stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth1 August 1965
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.
For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.
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.
Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.
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 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.
If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.