Paul Greengrass Quotes

Author Image

Paul Greengrass

Profession : Director

Birth : August 13, 1955

Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom.

Paul Greengrass

When you think of the Cold War, there are various places where you imagine espionage. Espionage crossroads of the Cold War bring you to the backstreets of Berlin, or Vienna.

Paul Greengrass

Deep down, all directors feel like frauds - because it's built into the nature of the job. You're the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment - and you? You can't do anything: You can't do the acting, you can't dress the set, you don't record the sound or shoot the images.

Paul Greengrass

Directing is all tied up with childhood loneliness. It's such an odd thing to end up doing.

Paul Greengrass

In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.

Paul Greengrass

The people who went on that airplane were unexceptional.

Paul Greengrass

Why are people saying it's too soon? Like the people on that flight, we need to agree about what to do about terrorism. And I think we need to have that conversation now.

Paul Greengrass

To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It's seven days a week. It's twenty hours a day.

Paul Greengrass

Tom Hanks has built his career playing ordinary men.

Paul Greengrass

Making a film, every film, is a big gamble, large or small. The more that you do it, the more you're aware of that.

Paul Greengrass

With a franchise movie, it's got to turn the wheels of the industry, and the studio has to have them. So you start with a release date. They say we're going to make a new 'Bourne' film, and it comes out summer of X. Then they start on a script, and invariably, the script is not ready in time.

Paul Greengrass

In my little imperfect way, what I'm trying to do is understand the world. As a filmmaker, you realize as you get older that each film is part of a dialogue you're having with yourself. That started when I was working in documentaries. And in a way, I've never deviated from it.

Paul Greengrass

Making movies is both entirely ludicrous and incredibly hard. It's a preposterous way to spend your time. You give up a lot for the privilege of doing it, and one of the things you get are relationships of immense trust that you see forged in situations of immense stress.

Paul Greengrass

It's a circus life, the movies. It's a lot of travelling, a lot of antisocial hours; there's a lot of it that's about escaping from life.

Paul Greengrass

I'd always suspected my face wouldn't fit in drama departments. And it never did!

Paul Greengrass

I just don't get on with institutions. I need simple relationships with people who believe in me.

Paul Greengrass

Studio people are bright. Empowering. They don't want to have to interfere creatively. That's their horror story, too.

Paul Greengrass

I always tell young film-makers, 'Find the song that only you can sing.' It doesn't just come to you. It's trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity.

Paul Greengrass

Action is only really compelling when it reveals character - character revealed through action, and not action for its own sake.

Paul Greengrass

Acting is many things, and one is an exercise of will. In any given scene, you're trying to find where the drama and conflict is and then deploy the actors to play at that point of conflict with precision, control, and complete will.

Paul Greengrass