Tom Hooper
Tom Hooper
Thomas George "Tom" Hooper is a British film and television director of English and Australian background. Hooper began making short films as a teenager, and had his first professional short, Painted Faces, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University Hooper directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes of Quayside, Byker Grove, EastEnders and Cold Feet...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth1 October 1972
careful people
I would say L.A. is more polite than London - it's a very careful place. People talk a lot in code.
block thinking self
I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.
touching bigger ends
The more uncompromisingly specific you are the more you end up touching the bigger universal truths.
thinking people childhood
I think the thumb print on the throat of many people is childhood trauma that goes unprocessed and unrecognized.
drama names bleak
A lot of dramas get a bad name commercially because they are unremittingly bleak.
thinking scary intellectual
There's something about being cerebral, intellectual, and yet emotionally repressed [in being villain]. If you think someone's doing this [bad] stuff and they're in complete control, that's more scary than if they're out of control.
kings fighting historical
In 'The King's Speech,' patriotism is utterly contained within a historical moment, the third of September, 1939, where the aggressor is clear, the fight is clear, it hasn't become complicated over time.
acting moments tense
Great acting is all about being in the moment, being in the present tense.
entrepreneur film-and-television way
The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.
festivals directors irony
The irony of a director going to film festivals is you never get to see any of the films.
thinking people enjoy
I think people enjoy finding out something genuinely new.
people london polite
I would say L.A. is more polite than London - it's a very careful place. People talk a lot in code.
acceptance issues people
Trans stories have now entered the mainstream in this fantastic way, but the most important thing is what follows from that is hopefully a shift in the experience of trans people - so that there's more acceptance in the culture to the issues they face and more support.
emotional leader anxiety
With the coming of radio as a mass medium, suddenly the world changed. It became about, 'Can this leader project emotional connection through the way he speaks on the radio?' And the anxiety about whether he could do that, we've inherited.