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 don't think of it as a competition - which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.
Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.
The importance of rehearsal is maybe you want to talk about how the scene's going to be designed, how it's going to be staged, all of those things. It's all about preparation, and deciding what mutually you don't want to do, rather than necessarily what you do.
The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.
As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.
Learn to say, “I don’t know the answer.” It could be the beginning of a very good day’s rehearsal.
The joy of a road movie is its very simple narrative nature, which is that you know you're going to go through different places and you're going to meet new people. At the same time, you have to not make it feel too obvious and too crudely episodic.
You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.
I want to inspire, and be inspired.
I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.
If you're doing a classic play, where if you do a Chekhov, you do the words as written. You can't do that with a novel; you have to do your version of the words as written.
I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies.
For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.
I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.