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

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

The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.
Sam Mendes

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.
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

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

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

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

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.
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 freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.
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

You think about taking audiences on a journey.
Sam Mendes

You're in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don't.
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

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