Sam Mendes

“I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.”

“Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.”

“The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.”

“The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.”

“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.”

“I don't think good and evil are polarized.”

“Thank God I don't live in Los Angeles. I think if you're there the whole time it just gets out of proportion and you lose touch completely with reality.”

“Now I'm back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.”

“I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself.”

“All I know is that I operate by going out to each of them and trying to learn the territory in which they operate. My language to each of them has to suit their brain.”

“There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.”

“One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films.”

“Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.”

“I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.”

“I don't think of it as a competition - which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.”

“I want to inspire, and be inspired.”

“I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing a Bond movie.”

“I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.”

“You think about taking audiences on a journey.”

“If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.”