Stephen Daldry

Professions :

Born :

May 2, 1960

I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.

bored hate people

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.

theatre important directors

I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.

awards silly hands

You have to trust your own instincts about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate and trust your own feelings about what you can and can't show for yourself, and it'll be different for everybody.

instinct different feelings

England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

garden silly running

I have never been motivated by money in my life. You can't make choices based on what the financial return might be.

return choices might

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.

theatre who-i-am couple

You [as an actor] have a responsibility to Jonathan's book and you have a responsibility to talk about a subject that is going to be, whether it's contentious or not, it's going t bring up a huge, emotional response from people. A lot of people will say they are ready or they're not ready.

emotional responsibility book

The truth of the matter is, every film is imperfect. It's the nature of the beast. One of the things that people ask me all the time is, what's the difference between theater and film, and one of the biggest differences is, in the theater you always get another go.

differences matter people

I'm not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, 'This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.' I usually say, 'I know who would be good for this. It's not me.

scripts would-be directors

There are a few writers that one has a relationship with that means, basically, you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare.

Actually, to be honest, this is a useful time to not be knowing what I'll be doing in 2013 or 2014, because really, for the last however many years, I've known what I've been doing for years and years ahead. You get into a cycle of non-reflection, and that gets a bit scary.

knowing reflection years

You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.

excess youth theatre

When I got married, my mother was very surprised. She said: What on earth is going on? I thought you were gay?

gay earth mother

They're a redefinition of boredom... the most important thing you need to know about an awards show is where is the nearest smoking opportunity.

boredom awards opportunity

With journalism, films always have to be to do with some personal statement of your own. As a general rule, I resist that. In the States, a question that kept coming up was this: how can you, as a man, talk about three women?

journalism three men

I would love to do something for TV... I wanna do 'Kavalier & Clay' on HBO as an eight-parter. It'll be so much better as a series, honestly.

One of the great joys of my job is that you spend a huge amount of time investigating different areas of literature.

different joy jobs

Ring up your parents and ring up your kids and tell them that you... by Stephen Daldry

Ring up your parents and ring up your kids and tell them that you love them.

rings parent kids

There has been one defining production for me in each decade. by Stephen Daldry

There has been one defining production for me in each decade.

has-beens defining productions

Bruce Friedrich

Arthur Penn

Allan Dwan

Bobby Miller

Bertrand Tavernier

Ben Wheatley