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
writing different three
Well, there are three different processes of making a film, of course. They're sort of re-written three times. You write it to start with, and then you shoot it and you re-write it while shooting and you sort of re-write it as you edit.
choices want different
If I wanted to work financially, I would have made a series of different choices. I do get offered lots of movies which you could make a lot of money out of. And I always say, 'Why would I do that, when someone else could do it much better than me? Why would I want to do an action picture? Why?
silly hands numbers
I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.
scripts directors would-be
I'm not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, 'This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.' I usually say, 'I know who would be good for this. It's not me.
jobs joy different
One of the great joys of my job is that you spend a huge amount of time investigating different areas of literature.
kids parent rings
Ring up your parents and ring up your kids and tell them that you love them.
defining productions has-beens
There has been one defining production for me in each decade.
opportunity awards boredom
They're a redefinition of boredom... the most important thing you need to know about an awards show is where is the nearest smoking opportunity.
mother gay earth
When I got married, my mother was very surprised. She said: 'What on earth is going on? I thought you were gay?
theatre excess youth
You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.
feelings different instinct
You have to trust your own instincts about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate and trust your own feelings about what you can and can't show for yourself, and it'll be different for everybody.
men three journalism
With journalism, films always have to be to do with some personal statement of your own. As a general rule, I resist that. In the States, a question that kept coming up was this: 'How can you, as a man, talk about three women?
hate bored people
I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.
reflection years knowing
Actually, to be honest, this is a useful time to not be knowing what I'll be doing in 2013 or 2014, because really, for the last however many years, I've known what I've been doing for years and years ahead. You get into a cycle of non-reflection, and that gets a bit scary.