Quotes

[on his time with British current-affairs TV show 'World in Action'] A festival of puerile self-importance, intense paranoia, fiddled expenses and brilliant creativity.

By the time I'd done Bloody Sunday (2002) I felt I reached the end of a chapter. I could feel it. I wanted to try something new, something different. Then, to my amazement, "Bloody Sunday" won lots of theatrical prizes, the audience award at Sundance, and then, to my even greater amazement, I had the opportunity to make a film in Hollywood. I mean, you wouldn't think, looking at my films, oh, there's a guy who's going to make films in Hollywood.

[on first turning down a 4th Bourne movie] I just felt that I'd done it. There's nothing unnatural about that. To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It's seven days a week. It's twenty hours a day. There were just too many other things that I was interested in. I felt that I had a wonderful, wonderful time. I loved it and I want it to continue and I hope that it does.

[how he developed his distinctive hand-held camera style] To be perfectly honest, i couldn't afford tripods.

[on Captain Phillips (2013)] Tom Hanks has built his career playing ordinary men. This performance is a study of endurance and heroism, but he crafts it from pieces of doubt, uncertainty and fear. It's not built from hubris.

[on Alan Clarke's films]...unquestionably the finest body of work created by a British director.