Film Quotes

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

I'm still Sean that me mates went to school with, not Sean the film star. And that's the way I prefer to be.

I always wanted to make a film that had this sort of Chinese-box effect, in which you keep opening it up and opening it up, and finally at the end you're at the beginning.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

When you're actually making the film, you're constantly battling to maintain its integrity.

I've always just gone with the best role, and I don't care if it's in theater, film or television.

I've been interested in dreams since I as a kid and I've wanted to do a film about them for a long time.

When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.

One of the reasons I did this, because I wasn't really looking for another science fiction film, was that my daughter can see it. She's 9 and it's really a good film for all ages.

My focus never wavered; I never accepted the film was not going to be finished.

It's nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do.

There's nothing like being on a massive-budget film where you don't know anything, and there's a million people, and no one's communicating.

I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

If you do a film with a studio, agents step in, they start saying, 'My actor has to get this amount of money', and it becomes about deals.

When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.

Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.

Every time I start a film I feel like I'm starting the first time, ever.

But I would say maybe just from an actress's perspective, probably 'Woman Under the Influence' is the best movie of all time. The style of filmmaking and the performances... you don't feel like you're watching a film.

I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.

Kubrick never explained the ending to us, or what his intentions were. He didn't intend for it to be a predictable film.

I became a real Shell Motor Oil expert, and I did this 25-minute film. It turned out really well and, as a result, they offered me more work and lots of commercials to direct.

My very, very first professional job was when I was 19 years old - I got a job doing an educational industrial film on Shell Motor Oil's oil products. I really put my heart into it - I wrote a script for it, I did a lot of research.

In the days of Gary Cooper, James Stewart etc, film stars personified the better aspects of human nature.

And I sense it was a rather constructed, almost half narrative fiction film in some ways. A lot of it was staged and manipulated to get those things in there that I knew to be strong.

The Loved One has been the most underrated film I've worked on.

It's the first film that I made where the director was not present under the camera, and it threw me.

You have film actors doing TV, rap stars doing TV, with everyone kind of crossing the line.

I'll never forget the first screening at the Berlin Film Festival. As soon as the film ended there was an outbreak of booing, which made us look at each other with some surprise.

In the film industry, all the money is focused on television and the stupidity of American cinema.

Really? Worst film you ever saw. Well, my next one will be better. Hello. Hello.