Stephen Daldry
Stephen Daldry
Stephen David Daldry, CBE is an English director and producer of both film and theatre. He has won the Tony Award for his work on Broadway, and has directed several feature films that have been nominated for Best Director and/or Best Picture at the Academy Awards. These films are Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Readerand Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth2 May 1960
choices might return
I have never been motivated by money in my life. You can't make choices based on what the financial return might be.
ideas stories film
I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.
morning telephones costumes
I am, in fact, Superman. Every morning I wake up and go into a telephone booth and change my costume, and then go to work.
bored needs three
I always say, 'I really need to take a break.' It's three days in and I'm getting pretty bored.
bored know-how knows
As soon as I know how to do something, I usually get bored with it.
thinking soldier arms
I think it's absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.
couple who-i-am theatre
I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.
eight ideas actors
Most theater methodology is predicated on the idea of repeated actions. That's what you work toward. Having the actor repeat the same moment eight times a week. In a film, it's getting that one moment right.
fun talking play
The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.
successful class people
The really successful work in England tends to be working-class writers telling working-class stories. The film industry has been slow to wake up to that, for a variety of reasons. It still shocks me how few films are written or made in England about working-class life, given that those are the people who go to movies.
mean hares
There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.
criticism pieces way
It's disingenuous to say that criticism doesn't get to you or you don't hear it or that you ignore it. When everybody says, 'That's crap. I hated that,' you hear it. But it's much, much worse when they're right: when you feel that it is an absolute piece of tosh. I made the film I wanted to make, so you just have to find a way of getting over it.
country past gun
Is it appropriate still for a German to have a gun? I only use that as an example of a country that's still deeply involved and engaged in the conversations about how to come to terms with the past. Certainly for that country, it's not forgotten.
war years issues
In issues of recent ethnic wars and genocides - particularly if you look at Darfur - one of the most remarkable things is our inability to act, still, despite the years of analyzing and re-analyzing what it does to subsequent generations. We still find a massive inability to step in and step up to the plate, when genocide is happening as we speak.