Sam Mendes
Sam Mendes
Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for directing the comedy-drama film American Beauty, which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the crime film Road to Perdition, and the James Bond films Skyfalland Spectre. He also is known for dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret, Oliver!, Company, and Gypsy. He directed an original stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth1 August 1965
I'm completely amazed and delighted. I kept my fingers crossed it would get good critical reaction, but the real surprise is that it's crossed over into the mainstream so comprehensively. I wasn't expecting that.
I froze for a bit, in truth-for about six months after the Oscars... There were lots of scripts landing on my desk.
We did ask, ... And luckily, instead of saying, 'Well, maybe, if you make a few adjustments,' there was some intelligent person at the Pentagon who flat-out said, 'No way.' Which is what you want, because there are lots of stories about them saying yes, then at the last minute wanting changes and, before you know it, everything's compromised.
People are capable of good and bad. As long as we continue perpetrating these absurd two-dimensional stories that everything is black and white - you're either good or bad - then the longer we'll misunderstand how many interesting stories you can tell in the space that exists between the two.
I think that's a wonderful thing when there's somebody at the top of their game but they still want to test themselves.
It always gets worse as you get older. You get more nervous, there's more to lose. He's got to live up to being Paul Newman.
I don't think anyone realized how important that war was,
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.
I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.
He really went from being a boy to being a man. It happened to him during the shooting of the movie, so a lot of it surprised me and I was really thrilled with what he came up with.
I am not a master-class director. I am not a teacher. I am a coach. I don't have a methodology. Each actor is different. And on the film set, you have to be next to them all.
I don't want to tell people what to think about war, ... I just want them to think about it.
I still can't quite believe it. Although there was something about the fact that it was a first-time writer, a first-time producer, and a first-time director all at the same time.
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.