Top 40 Sam Mendes Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I want to inspire, and be inspired.”

— Sam Mendes

2. “Confidence is essential, but ego is not.”

— Sam Mendes

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

— Sam Mendes

4. “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

5. “You’re in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don’t.”

— Sam Mendes

6. “The importance of rehearsal is maybe you want to talk about how the scene’s going to be designed, how it’s going to be staged, all of those things. It’s all about preparation, and deciding what mutually you don’t want to do, rather than necessarily what you do.”

— Sam Mendes

7. “You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.”

— Sam Mendes

8. “Learn to say, “I don’t know the answer.” It could be the beginning of a very good day’s rehearsal.”

— Sam Mendes

9. “Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond.”

— Sam Mendes

10. “Now Im back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.”

— Sam Mendes

11. “I’ve made movies that cost less than one car chase.”

— Sam Mendes

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

15. “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

16. “I like throwing snowballs at small children.”

— Sam Mendes

17. “As a first-time director in America, I feel I’ve been very fortunate.”

— Sam Mendes

18. “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

19. “I’ve made movies that cost less than one car chase. But that’s part of the pleasure of doing it, pushing yourself in new directions.”

— Sam Mendes

20. “I don’t think good and evil are polarized.”

— Sam Mendes

21. “The moment you have kids, you are prey to judgment, but you also become a judge. You find yourself going, “Can you believe what she did with such-and-such?” at school.”

— Sam Mendes

22. “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

23. “Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.”

— Sam Mendes

24. “For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.”

— Sam Mendes

25. “Politicizing of kids starts with pregnancy, of course. You shouldn’t be drinking wine. You can’t be smoking, either. The poor woman is poked and prodded and touched and obsessed over.”

— Sam Mendes

26. “One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films.”

— Sam Mendes

27. “I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that’s more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It’s something else that has nothing to do with what you’ve done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.”

— Sam Mendes

28. “Every Bond is different and every generation needs a different Bond and it’s been able to move with the times.”

— Sam Mendes

29. “I think with Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, people are much more open to something that is different.”

— Sam Mendes

30. “The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It’s about what goes on before the movie starts.”

— Sam Mendes

31. “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

32. “I’ve directed bits of action and so I know that it’s long and it’s very detailed. Editing action is a good deal more exciting than shooting action. Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it’s increments, tiny little pieces.”

— Sam Mendes

33. “The joy of a road movie is its very simple narrative nature, which is that you know you’re going to go through different places and you’re going to meet new people. At the same time, you have to not make it feel too obvious and too crudely episodic.”

— Sam Mendes

34. “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

35. “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

36. “I don’t think of it as a competition – which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.”

— Sam Mendes

37. “If you’re doing a classic play, where if you do a Chekhov, you do the words as written. You can’t do that with a novel; you have to do your version of the words as written.”

— Sam Mendes

38. “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

39. “Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it’s increments, tiny little pieces.”

— Sam Mendes

40. “If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.”

— Sam Mendes

41. “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

42. “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

43. “You think about taking audiences on a journey.”

— Sam Mendes

44. “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

45. “I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing a Bond movie.”

— Sam Mendes

46. “I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies.”

— Sam Mendes

47. “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