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.
Actors get used to scenes being cut.
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.
America is a country in which you can tell universal stories. It's a country in which you can express these things freely.
As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.
Directing, I realize, on film is far more personal, you know. Cinema really is a director's medium. This is a very personal film.
For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.
I am not a master-class director. I am not a teacher. I am a coach. I don't have a methodology. Each actor is different. And on the film set, you have to be next to them all.
I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself.
I don't think good and evil are polarized.
I don't think of it as a competition - which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.
I got absolutely everything wrong that first day, you know, and in film, the director is pretty much solely to blame. And in the end, you get what you ask for. If the design is wrong, or costumes or wrong, that's because you've asked for them one day and then the next day you don't like them.
I kind of forgot that it was Paul Newman. He's a great actor and came to do a job. But when he walked on set, everyone went quiet. Three or four days into the shoot, he arrived. Then you suddenly realize.
I like throwing snowballs at small children.
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.
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.
I think that's a wonderful thing when there's somebody at the top of their game but they still want to test themselves.
I think with Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, people are much more open to something that is different.
I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies.
I wanted it to be a story about human beings escaping imprisonment. It sounds very pretentious, but it's a rite-of-passage story that isn't just about America, but about human beings living together.
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.
I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.
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.
I'm from the theater, where the process of creating a character from the ground up is something that's not imposed on him. We started working on it months in advance, and we rehearsed for two weeks, and even the look of his apartment came out of discussions with him and the production designer.
If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.
In terms of being an outsider in America and having a certain type of objectivity to a degree, there were a few times I thought to myself: What on earth am I doing here? I'm a Brit making a movie so firmly set in the States!
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.
It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character.
It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.
It's great, it's exciting, you can't pretend that it isn't. I couldn't help but remember Close Encounters when I was a kid.
Just because I hold a shot for more than five seconds and it's all a deliberate tableau, people say it's theater. It's not really.
Kevin and Annette... I wanted them to do it together. They clearly wanted to work with each other.
Now I'm back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.
One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films.
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.
So much of what we were trying to do here is to give the lie to the perceived notions of gangster movies, which is difficult, given the fact that we've seen so many of them, brilliantly done and otherwise.
Story and cutting patterns are sometimes muddled in an audience's mind. This is a lot of story in less than two hours. Because it's not cut fast doesn't mean there's not a lot of story going on. Sometimes there's an impression of a lot happening in a movie, and nothing is actually happening.
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.
The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.
The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.
The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.
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.
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.
Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.
When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.
You do things bit by bit. That's the only way to play something really original, where the details stand out. You're not just showing us a cliched, generic character that you've seen before.
You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.
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.
You make the movies for audiences. You get as many people to see the movie as possible. You do not make them for Academy voters. There are only 6,000 and me. It's going to get at least one vote. I'll vote across the board for my movie.
You think about taking audiences on a journey.
You try to explain what you see. You have to do it with everyone. You're explaining how it looks, how it feels, its atmospheres and colors, what you feel thematically, what you feel the film is reaching for. You hope that they want to make it with you.
You're in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don't.
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.
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.
Sex. What Fun." to the students of Atlantic Theater Schoo
If you shout in the theater, people think you've gone a bit mad. But if you raise your voice on a film set, people just work a bit harder.
My process is slow and I enjoy it too much to rush. And I like to return to the theater between films. But after not doing any movies for a few years, perhaps I might do two in two years.
Regarding his commitment to directing Jarhead (2005) without a personal soldiering background: "This is new territory to me, but I hadn't spent two days in American suburbia when I directed American Beauty (1999). I only knew the script had an unusual and original voice and it was a challenge I wanted to take on. Jarhead (2005) is equal parts black humor, honesty, rage, lyricism, profanity and the mixture of machismo jarhead culture. With the exception of Three Kings (1999) this is a war that has been overlooked but which has a burning relevance to what is happening right now in the Middle East."
I feel very undeserving. I feel the award is a bank loan, which I'll take out and pay back by the end of 20 years, and by then I'll feel more deserving." - On receiving his Lifetime Achievement award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain
I feel they've understood in Europe. In America, it's like talking about a different movie.Fundamentally, Jarhead disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on. In Europe, there's a sense this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict.
Regarding the different reactions of Europeans and Americans to his film, "Jarhead" (2005): "I feel they've understood in Europe. In America, it's like talking about a different movie. Fundamentally, Jarhead disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on. In Europe, there's a sense this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict. It has more in common with Beckett, Sartre and Banuel than it does with Oliver Stone. In America, they assumed I was trying to make an Oliver Stone movie and that I'd failed."
Dated Jane Horrocks. [1992 - 1995]
Is a big cricket fan and is said to have incorporated the ideas of former England cricket captain Mike Brearly in his direction.
Educated at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, UK.
Dated actress Calista Flockhart in the late spring and summer of 1999.
Dated Rachel Weisz. [2001]
He was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honors List for his services to drama.
Taught cricket (his passion) at Summer Fields School, Oxford, UK after leaving school for a year.
Ranked #91 in Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List.
Sam married English actress Kate Winslet in the West Indies in May 2003.
Resides in both New York City and London, England.
Son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born on December 22, 2003, in New York, and weighed 7 pounds and 13 ounces.
He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1996 (1995 season) for Best Director for both Company and The Glass Menagerie at the Donmar Warehouse.
He was nominated for Best Director at the 1999 Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards for the 1998 production of The Blue Room.
He was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Director of the 1997 season for Othello at the Royal National Theatre.
He was awarded the 2003 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award: Special for his services and contributions as Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse for the past ten years.
He was awarded the 2003 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Director of 2002 for Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya in repertory company at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
He was awarded the 2002 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama) for Best Director for both Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night performed at the Donmar Warehouse.
He was awarded the 1995 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre) for Best Director for The Glass Menagerie.
He was awarded the 1989 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) for Most Promising Newcomer as Director of Minerva Studio in Chichester, England.
He was awarded the 2002 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Director for Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night performed at the Donmar Warehouse.
Has a home in Cotswolds, England.
He is of Portuguese descent. His grandparents were both Portuguese.
Was nominated for Broadway's 1998 Tony Award as Best Director (Musical), along with collaborator Rob Marshall, for a revival of "Cabaret."
Was born in the same hospital as his wife, Kate Winslet.
In 2000 he won his first Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for his production of The Real Thing
In 1999 he was Nominated for a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for Electra
Stepfather of Kate Winslet's daughter Mia
Childhood friend of Tom Hollander.
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