A biography for Nicolas Winding Refnhasn’t been written yet.
“I always, as a firm rule, make my movies based on how inexpensively I can make them because that means the more freedom I'm going to have.”
“I'm a huge John Hughes fan, and I grew up in the '80s, when his films came out. So, my introduction to what you'd call 'cinema love,' that illusion of love, was 'Sixteen Candles' and Molly Ringwald.”
“I think you have to be so indulgent in creativity in that, if you're happy, it's successful. If it's then financially successful, which is different parameters, then you're also happy.”
“Good and bad are not really relevant to me.”
“I'm a very funny man, so funny comes natural. And if you want to create horror, you need to be funny or campy.”
“With 'Only God Forgives,' what's great about that movie is it just freaked so many people out.”
“Creativity is about taking what is the norm and expanding it and continuing to expand it and expand it and expand it and expand it.”
“Television is dead. And television will not be reborn. It will not come back.”
“I'm a huge admirer of Keanu. I think he's absolutely extraordinary.”
“I love to look at beauty.”
“I very much love Los Angeles, and I love working here. I find it very inspiring and very creative, and some of the best crews are in Los Angeles.”
“I believe in free education, free healthcare. But I do not believe in equality.”
“There will always be a theatrical experience because there will always be cinemas no matter what. It's like there will always be theaters to have stage plays in.”
“There are wonderful artists who deal in the fashion world only, and you see by their creations that they are changing our understanding of sexuality and freedom and gender-bending.”
“My mother and stepfather were documentary filmmakers and, of course, had a very healthy Scandinavian mentality. When it came to cinema, my mother was very obsessed with the French New Wave. That was her generation.”
“'Valhalla Rising' is a fusion of my upbringing, basically: everything I grew up loving and wanted to make a film of.”
“For me, the greatest pleasure is when you make something, and everyone argues about it.”
“The more we become civilized, the more we simultaneously understand our need to be virtuous and our need to understand our experiences on a subconscious level.”
“When I was 20 years old, my uncle was an arthouse distributor, and he would take me to Cannes every year to work as a film scout.”
“A lot of the surreal filmmakers, like David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, or countless other underground filmmakers... Their sense of explosive images have always dominated their films. It's a way to shock the senses, to make them open themselves.”