Quotes By Sam Mendes

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.

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.

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

I like throwing snowballs at small children.

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

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.

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.

There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work.

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.

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

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

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

There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.

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

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

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

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

I don't think good and evil are polarized.

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

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.

One of the reasons I loved working with Tom is people feel they know who he is... I think working with an actor who the audience already has a relationship with actually helps you in a film like this.