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
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.
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.
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.
I froze for a bit, in truth-for about six months after the Oscars... There were lots of scripts landing on my desk.
I'd like to think there's a huge interest out there because it's part of our daily life.
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.
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.
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.
Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.
If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.
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.
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.
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.
When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.