Danny Boyle
Danny Boyle
Daniel "Danny" Francis Boyle is an English film director, producer, screenwriter and theatre director, known for his work on films including Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, Sunshine, 127 Hours, and Steve Jobs. Boyle's 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won eight, including the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he also introduced that year's...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth20 October 1956
As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk.
That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.
I always think, when there's stuff that people don't like, I always say that if I have another success, I'll enjoy it more, but you don't really.
I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose - although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope.
Come a crisis, we want other people.
There is a Steve [Jobs] that Apple would like to actually present to the public. They have a character, Steve, and they want to keep that story going. And it's very important that writers challenge that occasionally and not just trust their parent companies to tell them.
I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.
I don't want to make pompous, serious films.
Although I behave in a quite reserved way in my personal life, give me a stage and I'll be as flamboyant as I can.
Directing is a mixture of compromise and perfectionism. When you lose the judgment of which is more important at any particular moment, you're time is over. They find you out and send you packing.
I love huge movies. Not sure I am the guy to make them, but you can rely on me being there watching them.
I don't want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them.
I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar.
We want to see drama told in a cathartic way, with power, with emotion where you empathize and then you're frightened. All those feelings charge up in you and you feel for the story.