I really like telling stories. When I was a kid, I wanted to write songs. In quite a fundamental, gratifying, childish way, I enjoy the doing of telling a story.
The only way one can guarantee one's loyalty is love. Loyalty is beyond logic, really.
In a world of increasing grey areas, we are becoming more and more entrenched in black and white positions.
My experience of people is that they are infinitely forgivable.
The trouble with talking about acting is that it's like sex. It's enormously fun to do but just dreadfully embarrassing when you have to talk about it.
It's weird, because usually if you're British and you go to America you play baddies; but I play naughty people here and goodies in America.
I was brought up Catholic. I'm lapsed. From the age of three I was with the nuns. Now I'm an atheist.
The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful.
I'm a guy who is married to an actress, who has three children, and lives in Tribeca. Where do you draw the line on what I am allowed to discuss?
I have no interest in movies that take you somewhere dark and leave you there, for no reason.
Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.
The world is split into two kinds of people, those who would go out for a drink with John Lennon, and those who`'d choose Paul McCartney... After The Beatles came back from India, Lennon wrote "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and McCartney wrote "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." End of argument.
I have an interest in giving people a cathartic experience, and making them look at homeless people differently, and making them question how they judge people, in general.
Up until like five seconds ago, I just took what jobs came along.
I feel like the world we live in seems to be full of an increasingly grey area, but the culture that we live in seems to be getting really entrenched in black and white positions, and I think it's urgent to talk about that because it's going to kill us all.
I still read the British papers, but I’ve never been a Royalist, ever. It’s funny, there always seems to be much more of a fascination with the Royal Family over here then there does in England.
I remember coming on my first set and it being a playground of things I wanted to ask questions about: cameras and lenses and what the lenses do, what's the focus puller doing and how does that work? Why is there less margin for error when there's less light? I was always asking questions and watching directors closely.
I learned so much about myself from reading this script and doing this movie [Shelter] because the level of judgment and the lack of humanity I saw in myself was disgusting. I never took into account what a homeless person might have been through.
Doing the big budget films really makes you appreciate doing movies like Shelter. It's because this is like doing theater, you just have to hit the ground running
I find that our response to homelessness really puzzlingly. It's a peculiar response that people have.
I think language is the most important thing that human beings have ever accomplished, and the only thing that's really going to get us all out of the troubles that we find ourselves in.
I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.
Logic doesn't really provide for loyalty. If your logic changes suddenly and things not make sense, you can alter your allegiance, but love stops you from being able to do that.
I realized that this story [Shelter] is all about family, family loss, and how it influences you day to day life.
I wanted to know as the director how the actors wanted to tell this story I wanted to know what they thought.
