Top 30 Sam Mendes Quotes

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

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

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.

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

I want to inspire, and be inspired.

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.

If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

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.

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

I like throwing snowballs at small children.

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.

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

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.

I don’t think of it as a competition – which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.

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

The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It’s about what goes on before the movie starts.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I don’t think good and evil are polarized.