Quotes from Lenny Abrahamson

As soon as you make some films that people like, you'll be sent material, and that can come from anywhere.

There are more ways to make 'Room' badly than well.

People say that soundstage sets never quite look like reality. But actually, they can. They can be as real as you want as long as you pay attention to the kind of detail that is given for free in a real place.

I'm interested in discontinuities and interruptions, people having to rewrite the narrative of their lives because of sudden changes.

I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster.

I can think back to being four or five and not wanting to sit at the kids' table because I thought it was demeaning. I was this ridiculous little kid.

I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.

Films should have the capacity to bring you into another world.

I think people like to have their categories clear. They want to know if it's fiction or fact, biopic or not.

Delusion is not good; better to be realistic and then surprise yourself if you're lucky.

As a filmmaker, I've sat on the other side, and I've watched when people I know have a film, and it's doing really well, and people are talking about it in all the trades, and everybody is excited about it, and I've always thought, 'Hmm, what would that be like?'

I remember as a kid being asked if I was Jewish or Irish. I said, like the glib little 15-year-old I was, 'You can be both.' Feeling very pleased with myself. Before they smacked me.

On your first film, you think these are going to be your closest friends for the rest of your life. You form a bond, but then you go back to the rest of your life.

For me, I always think of the image of sweeping out my footprints as I walk through a scene.

I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.

I did go to cheder and was a bar mitzvah. We were members of an Orthodox synagogue, although we were not religious. My grandfather was Polish. He came to Ireland in the '30s.

'Room' was a particularly cohesive group, crew and cast.

I wanted to make films that were culturally relevant in my own country, that challenged people, and that people talked about.

As a small kid, I had this huge desire to be thought of as really clever.

I usually shower the night before, lay out all my clothes on the floor, so then I just fall into them, clean my teeth, stumble out the door, get into my car and go wherever it is that we're shooting. You have breakfast on set.

I think digital is getting so much better. It's harder and harder to make the argument now for film. All things being equal, though, I still prefer to capture on film.

'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.

I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.

Good filmmakers make bad films; it happens.