Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE, was an English film director and producer, at times referred to as "The Master of Suspense". He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as England's best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a US citizen in 1955...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth13 August 1899
CityLondon, England
If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.
I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened; they revolt me. That round white thing without any holes, and when you break it, inside there’s that yellow thing, round, without any holes… Brrr! Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.
This weapon [an ax] is primitive but effective. And it's also guaranteed to be fifty-percent painless. You see, it takes two people to operate, and the person at this end [the handle] doesn't feel a thing.
I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.
People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person really thinks or feels.
Never turn your back on a friend.
When you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you are going to create something - that's as happy as I'd want to be.
I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me.
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'
I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.
I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humour. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humour. It's a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, 'I say, is that thing safe?
I'm full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.