Top 20 Stephen Daldry Quotes

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it’s a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I’ve always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.

If I wanted to work financially, I would have made a series of different choices. I do get offered lots of movies which you could make a lot of money out of. And I always say, ‘Why would I do that, when someone else could do it much better than me? Why would I want to do an action picture? Why?’

Ring up your parents and ring up your kids and tell them that you love them.

The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what’s going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.

I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I’ll get bored.

There has been one defining production for me in each decade.

I think it’s absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.

When I got married, my mother was very surprised. She said: ‘What on earth is going on? I thought you were gay?’

There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.

I would love to do something for TV… I wanna do ‘Kavalier & Clay’ on HBO as an eight-parter. It’ll be so much better as a series, honestly.

I’m not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, ‘This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.’ I usually say, ‘I know who would be good for this. It’s not me.’

One of the great joys of my job is that you spend a huge amount of time investigating different areas of literature.

England is strictly class-based. What’s surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

I never want to make a film. I don’t wake up in the morning going, ‘Ooh, I’d really love to be on set making a film today’. I’m aware that other contemporary film directors perceive film-making as what they do, as what they have to do. But I would hope that I am more catholic in my tastes.

They’re a redefinition of boredom… the most important thing you need to know about an awards show is where is the nearest smoking opportunity.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

I’ve never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I’ve been to Los Angeles on my hands. I’ve never made a movie there and I’ve never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.

As soon as I know how to do something, I usually get bored with it.

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world – you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.