Joe Wright
I consider all drama to be the opportunity to see the world from another person's point of view. That seems to be the point of drama, really. And thereby to encourage understanding and even love.
I like the idea of doing something outside my comfort zone.
Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.
You need a pulse in a film. If I see a film that doesn't have rhythm, it's like listening to music that doesn't have rhythm; it doesn't really work.
I had a breakdown after making 'Atonement.'
I find man's inhumanity to man extraordinary,,, I can't get my head around it.
I kind of muddled through 'Pride & Prejudice,' but with 'Atonement,' I knew what I was doing. That makes it sound like I had no doubt. I had doubts - I didn't know whether it would work. But I knew exactly what I wanted to try to do.
Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.
I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.
Generally, I've never known quite how to fit in in civilian life, but on set, making a film, I know exactly where to go, how to behave and how I fit.
I've been lucky over the past few years. Things have just happened for me.
I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.
I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.
I feel more in touch with the world when I'm filming.
'Pride' is my first film with a happy ending. Before, I naively thought they were a cop-out, but now I've come to believe that happy endings and wish fulfilment are an incredibly important part of our cultural life.
My father was 65 when I was born so we didn't have much time together.
Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.
I see the job of directing as being one of creating the right atmosphere, creating an environment where people can realize their full potential.
I wouldn't presume to know something, but I have lots to learn and that's what I attempt to do through my work.
There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.
I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.
An artist needs to live to create, and to live means to suffer.
I've made some films that were very much image based: 'Anna Karenina' and 'Pan,' for instance.
A lot of directors don't really like actors.
Most actors hate the feeling of being handled.
I was once called a hack, and when you put as much emotion into a piece of work as I do, to be called a hack is really heartbreaking.
'Blue Velvet' changed my life forever. It was like I'd always read Chaucer and suddenly discovered Charles Bukowski. It made me understand that there is poetry of sublime ecstasy and dark terror, and it spoke to a side of me that hadn't been reached before.
When I left college, I though that I would be immediately embraced by the film world and instead found myself sitting in a squat for three years not knowing what to do with my life.
I'd like to make the film of Sam Selvon's book 'The Lonely Londoners.'
American actors are very different to British actors who have generally studied and been brought up culturally with the sense that the writer is the star and that their job is to serve the writing. Whereas Hollywood actors are brought up to believe that the actor is the star, and everything and everybody is in the service of them.
'Hanna' was nice. It was Saoirse Ronan's idea. Usually, the director casts the actor, but in this case, the actor cast the director.
Film has become a very passive experience, but with theatre, there is a contract made with the audience, where they participate. That's why my parents' puppet theatre was such a special place - people used their imaginations. It's a muscle that needs using.
I fell in love with film and its potential. The idea of putting one image next to another image and creating meaning blew my mind.
The more you practise happiness, the better you get at it. So if you spend lots of time practising being depressed, you're going to get really good at being depressed. And if you spend lots of time practising being happy, you're going to get better at being happy.
I'm not good when idle.
That luxury, ossified Los Angeles world isn't good for the soul.
It's not something someone sets out to do - I never really set out to make movies about strong fighting women, but it just seems to happen that way. I've certainly known some, and I think my sister was probably a big influence.
I find men odd. I don't really understand men. I kind of feel like I understand women better than I do men, really.
I'm very interested in dance, and I'm very interested in how people express themselves through movement. And of course, cinema is a kinetic art form. It's almost the point of cinema - it's time-based and movement-based.
With 'Atonement,' I put a lot of pressure on myself, and then I made an advert for Chanel, which 'broke the camel's back' emotionally.
Studios are often very nervous of things they don't recognize, by which I mean things that haven't been done before, and therefore, they take a really original idea, and they recognize the originality, and then they try and make it look like something they recognize. So they try to turn it into something far more procedural.
I'm interested in people with very exceptional world views or realities.
So much of today's film culture, in England and America, is based on lies, really. The industry is very ambitious, and success has become such an opium, people start from the wrong place they forget sometimes that the core of what we do is storytelling. It serves a need, a purpose for the individual and society to pull us together in shared experience and help us realize we're not alone in that experience.Collection: Lying
I think that people are still trying to understand each other and overcome prejudices. And people are still, most important, loving each other. And that is today as it was yesterday and will be for another 200 years.Collection: Thinking
I don't ever want to go backwards, I quite like it. I like the freedom and I like the - What I set out to do was to make a big action-adventure movie that ticks all the boxes in terms of audience expectations and spectacle, and yet also make a very personal film and it feels like I've gotten away with that, I've managed that.Collection: Adventure
I've been wanting for some time to find a way of stylizing cinema and trying to get closer to the emotional story I was telling and get rid of all the bumph that goes with it and allow the audience a more participatory experience. It was an attempt to do all of those things and to express the idea that all these people were just performing roles in their lives.Collection: Emotional
I think people are at their most creative when they're relaxed. I don't believe that tension is good for creativity. Everyone is relaxed and therefore can feel able to express their own individual creativity and lots of ideas come in. It's a joy like that.Collection: Believe
I went to comprehensive school in North London and left without any qualifications [diploma]. And I was doing bits of acting and improv in a drama club in the evenings. Then I discovered you didn't need qualifications to go to art school, you just needed a body of work.Collection: Art
I worked hard, but I was lucky the right people happened to see my work.Collection: People
I'm quite spontaneous in my decisions often. Your career is kind of what happens whilst you're busy developing other screenplays, and so it came out of the blue.Collection: Blue