Top 55 Andrew Haigh Quotes

I was not a happy teenager in the slightest.

We can all understand that feeling of being alone in the world trying to find ways to not be alone.

I think it is a burden… that we constantly realise that there isn’t that much rhyme or reason to why something happens. If we think about that too much, it can make all of our decisions very stressful.

I like going to a new environment with open eyes.

I only want to tell films that I really feel passionate about telling.

The endings to me are the key moment in ‘Weekend’ and ’45 Years.’ I know how I want my gut to feel at the ending. Even if I can’t articulate in words what that feeling is, I’m trying to find ways to get there.

My films are very everyday, and people don’t always want to go to the cinema to see ordinary lives. They want to see something a bit more extraordinary. I get that desire, but it’s not the kind of film I want to make.

I wanted to make films since I was young. My background had nothing to do with anything creative, so it seemed an impossible task.

When I started making films, it was never that I had this great ambition to only do gay-themed material.

America is so diverse.

If I can do a scene in one shot, it’s in one shot. Most of my shots are pretty long. I think with ‘Looking,’ what we have in the first minute is a whole episode of a traditional TV show. I like to let things breathe; I like to let things have a certain tone.

When I was growing up, I was watching fairly standard American cinema.

Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Ratcatcher’ blew me away when it came out. When I started making short films, I would watch that film over and over again, marvelling at how that story visually unfolded.

I’ve always felt like an outsider, whether in school or when I’m working or within the industry or just in society at large.

A lot of gay-themed films are terrible. And mainstream audiences and the press aren’t interested, understandably.

Our past absolutely defines everything we do in the present. We can’t help it. We’re made by the events of our past, so there’s no escaping it.

Relationships are so important to all of us.

I think the gay community is made up of so many little different things, different parts, different people… I think that can be quite hard for people. You think you’ve found your tribe, but actually, that isn’t your tribe, and then you have to keep searching for what kind of makes sense.

People have very difficult lives. We can judge them for making the wrong decisions, but if you look harder and understand that these lives can be difficult, hopefully you’re at least a bit more sympathetic to the decisions these people have to make.

The reality of our lives is never like what you see in those romantic comedies or dramas. Things don’t always end good. Things don’t usually end good.

I’m really bad at knowing if something I’ve done is any good. I can’t work it out; I can’t be objective about anything I do.

If I see someone break down in tears, I don’t necessarily feel empathy for them in those moments unless it’s really warranted. I feel like a tear needs to be warranted in a movie; it needs to be earned.

The kinds of films I like are the ones that take their time. If you reach an emotional pinnacle too early on in a film, that’s kind of it. I think, as in real life, when you’re getting to know someone, it starts off slowly.

I think there’s always a conflict within me about being comfortable and secure and then being an individual and fighting for what I want to be on an individual basis.

Coming from a different perspective on a society is really interesting. I love the Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Phantom Thread,’ and that’s a version of Britishness and Englishness made by an American.

Homophobia obviously still exists, but it is a lot more subtle, and it is a lot more in the background.

‘Call Me by Your Name’ is essentially the universal nature of love.

With supporting roles, you just want really good actors that can make it bigger than what’s there.

When I made ‘Weekend,’ the idea that ‘Moonlight’ would win the Oscar would be like, Whaaaaat? Like, that’s not going to happen.

In the early stages of being out, you meet all these people from all kinds of backgrounds, and the one thing you have in common is you’re all gay, but then you start to realise how different your experiences actually are.

We get older, and we get more wrinkles, but fundamentally, we stay the same… You have the same fears and doubts and concerns and dreams and passions and all those kinds of things, so I feel like you don’t change as much as you think you do.

My straight friends accept I’m gay but they forget that some people don’t. Even now, if I go into a party, people don’t usually assume I’m gay, so you have to keep coming out. And if you say you’ve got a film with a gay subject matter, you can sometimes see people’s eyes going, ‘Oh! OK!’

I went through a period of watching probably too many Bergman films in a row. I felt like I’d discovered the answer to what cinema should be.

I would certainly not support Trump in any way shape or form, but I want to have sympathy.

I’m interested in how we understand ourselves in our relatioships and how we define ourselves.

That’s the biggest thing I struggle with. We could never hope to represent every gay person in America. There will be people who will say, ‘Well, my experience of being gay isn’t like that,’ to which I can only say, ‘That’s fine.’

Horses terrify me.

Men are both bad and awful. And women are both bad and awful. And they can both be good and wonderful on both sides.

In the end, with all of my films, I want to understand the continuity between these films and understand what they’re trying to do.

The longer you get in a relationship, the harder it becomes to confront problems.

I have seen a lot of gay-themed films that didn’t really express how I see being gay at this moment in the world. There never seemed to be a kind of authentic depiction of relationships.

As a person, I am totally obsessed with the choices and decisions we make in our lives and how they dictate the course of our lives. Seemingly random choices that we make end up defining everything.

When you make a film, everyone wants to define it.

You work really hard on something, and you know you can’t always make great work. It just doesn’t happen like that, I don’t think, at least not for most people, anyways.

We pass people in the street and ignore them when they’re clearly suffering. It makes you wish we could all feel when someone needs something.

I think people have this idea that I just lived in my place in England and never left. During ‘Looking,’ I was in America for four years. I’ve got a green card. I spend half my time there. It doesn’t feel like an alien world at all.

I think all of my male characters, I suppose, in all of my films, they’re not necessarily the traditional version of masculinity.

People’s lives often don’t turn out as they expect.

Personally, I don’t like to talk too much to the actors about the camera choices because I feel like the way I want them to perform is as if it feels very rooted in the real world and that I’m essentially stepping back and just watching and hoping they feel safe with me watching.

I am fascinated by that person who is trying to live authentically, but they are on the outside of society, so how do they manage in the world around them?

I always think that there’s a weight of prejudice from the past that gay people perhaps carry around with them. Even if it doesn’t exist so much around them, they still have a feeling of being excluded, and perceived prejudice is almost as unsettling as actual prejudice.

I’m not very good at thinking, ‘This is the thing I should do now to help my career.’ I mean, I want to keep my career going, but that’s not what draws me to a story.

It’s very important that all the supporting characters feel like they’ve existed in the world, that they’ve had a history, and they’ll go on to have a history within the scope of the story rather than just popping up and then disappearing.

I think people do like extremes in cinema. There are very few films told about everyday middle-class couples, which is odd to me, as there are a lot of everyday middle-class couples.

I think it’s always interesting to me how we keep secrets from the ones we love the most. You could be so close to someone, but still there was something you can’t express, you can’t tell them, because it’s almost too painful and too hard for you to articulate yourself, because you don’t fully understand it.