Quotes About Films

My films have elements of genre in them, which prevents them from being purely art films.

I grew up in the heat of '70s postmodern fiction and post-Godard films, and there was this idea that what mattered was the theory or meta in art.

I see films in theaters, and I enjoy films. I enjoy the art of storytelling, and the different ways to tell them.

For me, good films and good books are irreducible to a lesson. You can't just kind of translate them into one statement. On the contrary, the more you do that, the less wisdom in art there is.

My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.

Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.

I rarely see one of the 'summer blockbuster' movies. I'd like to see a stronger focus on smaller, smarter movies.

I don't particularly enjoy watching films in 3D because I think that a well-shot and well-projected film has a very three-dimensional quality to it, so I'm somewhat sceptical of the technology.

The subject of so many films is the protection of the victim, and I think, I don't give a damn about those things. It's not the job of films to nurse people. With what's happening in the chemistry of love, I don't want to be a nurse or a doctor, I just want to be an observer." As a child, Claire Denis wished to be a nurse; she is no longer a child. Years have passed and soon we love this world, so soon we are willing to coexist with dust in our eyes.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

You go back to those films of the '40s and '50s and hear the dialogue, the way the people played off each other - the wordplay. I think we've really lost that in movies.

There had been plenty of books and films romanticizing vampires over the last century. It was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.

War was terrible and terrifying - blood, death, torture, blitz, camps. But if you watched the films they made, The Great Escape, The Bridge on the River Kwai, it seemed it was possible for war to be a chance for heroism and medal winning.

When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now. But I don't think there are too many films coming out these days that we're going to look at in the future and say, 'This is one of the great ones.'

Some of these things I saw in foreign films - African films, Cuban films - long before I decided to really go on this course as an actor. I started to think about what values I saw in those films that I wanted to bring to my projects.

I've always had an interest in vampire films - not just 'Nosferatu,' but there are many others that I have enjoyed: Abel Ferrara, Coppola, Neil Jordan.

I made so many films I thought were great and they turned out horrible, and I made films I did not believe in at all, and 'Shadow Of The Vampire' was one of these films I did not believe in during the shooting. And then when I saw it I was surprised what they had made out of it. They edited for quite a long time.

I like the vampire films because of the fantasy of it.

I made films, like 'Shadow of the Vampire,' and I did not like the work I did on it and then Willem Dafoe was nominated for the Oscar. I made films like 'The Adventures of Pinocchio' with Martin Landau. I thought I would get nominated and it flopped. You never know.

Audiences seem to have a limitless appetite for vampires and for fantasy in general. Unlike many other British actors, I haven't been building up my pension appearing in films like 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter,' but fantasy has now got a grip on me. I am also appearing in 'Game of Thrones' as the head of the House of Lannister.

I think that my vampires in general were influenced by my being allowed to watch the Hammer vampire films. Vampire Circus, also shown as Circus of Fear, was one of those movies.

I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents.

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

I never really planned a career. I've tried to avoid it. I've tried to do this stuff I felt for, the stuff I like. So, I've just been meeting these fantastic directors who've offered me a variation of different parts and different films.