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It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.

Sam Mendes
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Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.
Sam Mendes
One of the reasons I loved working with Tom is people feel they know who he is... I think working with an actor who the audience already has a relationship with actually helps you in a film like this.
Sam Mendes
Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.
Sam Mendes
It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.
Sam Mendes
For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.
Sam Mendes
Now I'm back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.
Sam Mendes
You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.
Sam Mendes
I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.
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
You're in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don't.
Sam Mendes
Kevin and Annette... I wanted them to do it together. They clearly wanted to work with each other.
Sam Mendes
The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.
Sam Mendes
I don't think of it as a competition - which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.
Sam Mendes
The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.
Sam Mendes
I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself.
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 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 don't think good and evil are polarized.
Sam Mendes
As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.
Sam Mendes
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
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
One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films.
Sam Mendes
All I know is that I operate by going out to each of them and trying to learn the territory in which they operate. My language to each of them has to suit their brain.
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
You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.
Sam Mendes
I think with Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, people are much more open to something that is different.
Sam Mendes
When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.
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
I like throwing snowballs at small children.
Sam Mendes
You think about taking audiences on a journey.
Sam Mendes
I still can't quite believe it. Although there was something about the fact that it was a first-time writer, a first-time producer, and a first-time director all at the same time.
Sam Mendes
I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies.
Sam Mendes
The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.
Sam Mendes
If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.
Sam Mendes
I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.
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
I want to inspire, and be inspired.
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
My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.
Don Johnson
I've been a very lucky actor.
Bob Newhart
I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.
David Warner
When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.
Bruce Dern
Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.
Kenneth More
I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.
Jonathan Frakes
I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.
Lisa Kudrow
I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.
Omar Sharif
I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.
David Zucker
I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.
Herschel Walker