I'm just a foul-mouthed Brit.
Truth is like most opinions - best unexpressed.
I'm basically quite a cheerful person.
I don't feel one could even remotely touch the idea of intimidating others, but because I've understood the other side of the experience, I will occasionally, if I smell that could even be in the air for a few minutes, say to the director, "Please, you must tell me anything you want. Please say all the things you think might be terribly hurtful like, 'That was boring.'"
I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. Ive had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.
If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.
Actually I think 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' could sit very very perfectly in the middle of a Disney world I think.
Even if people are all from the same place, there can be very, very different approaches. It's one of the things I'm fascinated by. It's why I like directing. I like to see how different people approach trying to be truthful, on camera or in the theater, and whether you can make them match up.
The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.
After Frankenstein, I feel as if I want to make a film about somebody having a nice cup of tea.
I noted about Cate Blanchett was her very positive lack of concern for how she turns out in Cinderella. She is happy to be a villainess and very pleased to be encouraged as I did with her to reveal this backstory and feel as though this was very human, that this broken heart of hers, if you might regard it that way, would be visible, but she never played for sympathy and I really admired that about her, so she's just there, she just is and uncompromisingly.
I guess I've done a couple of boys-y movies and on the whole you get bracketed into things you've just done, so it was an imaginative surprise from my Disney family to pull me out of the hat, as it were in Cinderella.
Across all Cinderella versions it was clear that the 21st century was not very much in evidence, particularly in the character of Cinderella so it seemed, it felt actually as though it hadn't been done for quite some time, not with the kind of lushness that we could do it with, with an absolute removal of the passivity of Cinderella and finding an amusing way, a lighthearted but significant way of making her proactive and not a girl who's life is about waiting for a bloke.
I looked at the 1950 animated film [Cinderella], I read a couple of editions of the fairy tale that I have in my house and all of it seemed to say that there was room for a version that delivered, in this story, which seems to invite a feeling in people and I think that is some version of a classical world.
I've heard from quite a few people, you sense that there is an ownership of the [ Cinderella], it was so personal for so many people, so I was interested in trying to work out why that was.
Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp.
Sometimes it comes out in what I call tricksy behavior. That's not always easy to deal with, but it's fascinating. The key thing is to make sure that somebody's tricks don't trip up somebody else.
The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.
I wanted to have a place and a space, and a building, in which to create a season of work I am here because the idea of a theatrical home is very appealing to me
I don’t feel in a kind of race or competition with him or anybody else, because that kind of reactive thing isn’t good, or isn’t useful for natural creative instincts
There are some amazing stories from all over this country, where people's work and contribution has been acknowledged. To be part of that is an absolutely fantastic feeling.
Frankenstein feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms. It appeals to something very primal, but it's also about profound things, the very nature of life and death and birth - about, essentially, a man who is resisting the most irresistible fact of all, that we will be shuffling off this mortal coil.
So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.
If it's good art, it's good.
Somehow I know there was something so right about my doing Frankenstein and taking so long over it that I've probably been laying some ghost inside myself. It was a very necessary job for me to do, but it'll take some time to recover from it.
