Christopher Hampton
Christopher Hampton
Christopher James Hampton, CBE, FRSLis a British playwright, screenwriter, translator and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisonsand also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth26 January 1946
CityFaial Island, Portugal
couple reading thinking
Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.
nice thinking good-movie
Often I think the novels I read won't make very good movies - I better not say which I'm looking at for potential films! - but it's nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.
film moments wanted
There was a moment in the early '80s when I wanted to work on films and wanted to live in L.A.
book successful film
There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.
real breathing people
It's great to get out of the study and work with real living and breathing people.
book film ifs
If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.
play saws firsts
I'm ashamed to say the first play I saw at the Royal Court was mine.
done film known
I love films. If I'd known how to get into or do it from the word go, I would have done that.
art disappointment numbers
A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.
changed dramatic endangered films kinds
I like L.A., but I think what's changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.
birth court gave less royal sunday
The Royal Court more or less gave birth to me. I thought it only right that I should come back to have some Sunday lunch.
asking critics feels thinks writer
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.