Danny Boyle

Movies about space raise those questions of what we're doing here, and that inevitably introduces a spiritual dimension. ”

I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose - although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope. ”

You know what actors are like; they moisturize every night. They're frozen in time. ”

A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit. ”

Actors are steeped in a world of agents and where the next job is coming from and what are their expenses and what is the hotel like. You want to take them out of that world and dump them into another world, so that when you meet them on the screen they don't seem like the guy who was in two others movies that year. ”

I always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church. ”

You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination. ”

Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination. ”

As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk. ”

Although I behave in a quite reserved way in my personal life, give me a stage and I'll be as flamboyant as I can. ”