Sam Mendes Quotes

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Sam Mendes

Profession : Director

Birth : August 1, 1965

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Sam Mendes

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.

Sam Mendes

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

Sam Mendes

There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work.

Sam Mendes

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.

Sam Mendes

I like throwing snowballs at small children.

Sam Mendes

Kevin and Annette... I wanted them to do it together. They clearly wanted to work with each other.

Sam Mendes

I think with Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, people are much more open to something that is different.

Sam Mendes

You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me.

Sam Mendes

As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.

Sam Mendes

It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character.

Sam Mendes

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next, and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

Sam Mendes

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

Sam Mendes

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.

Sam Mendes

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

Sam Mendes

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

Sam Mendes

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

Sam Mendes

I want to inspire, and be inspired.

Sam Mendes

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

Sam Mendes