British Film Quotes

The Hollywood image of the movie business is all about ambition and high achievers like James Cameron. But the British film industry is much more about men who wear cravats and work with model trains and hope another series of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' will be commissioned. ~ Peter Capaldi

The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point. ~ Rupert Everett

I was offered Fagin-type roles, but I wanted to do new things. I could have worked in America, but there was a recession in the British film industry, and I wanted to work in England. I've no regrets. ~ Ron Moody

I can't always be making 'British films.' Why should we be making films about corsets and horses and girls learning to drive when Americans send over an event movie and make five or 10 million? ~ Noel Clarke

I have always thought we should think less about the British film industry as an entity, and more about getting British talent working. ~ Eric Fellner

A lot of the reasons that I'm resistant to making films in the U.S. have nothing to do with not doing a film in Hollywood, but rather to do with what I'm committed to working on in the U.K. I feel very committed to the British film industry and infrastructure. ~ Mike Leigh

As a black actress, all I was offered in British film was the best friend role, whereas in TV I was offered a whole spectrum of parts. ~ Sophie Okonedo

I like the constant rise and fall of the British film industry. But above all, I like the workhorses who kept going no matter what. ~ Peter Capaldi

It's weathered many a storm, but the British film industry is, thankfully, still afloat. ~ Peter Capaldi

British films are all "room with a view and a staircase and a pond." ~ Ben Dreyfuss

I don't care to analyze acting. On the other hand there is a fascination because distributors are putting out British films. You get films here with great performances you'll never see again. Why compare. We should go after the businessmen. ~ Tim Roth

I'm somebody who is very, very proud to have been a part of the British film industry all my life and to have kind of been involved with a very important piece of British film history. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

I think it's important that we have a new batch of British film-makers that aren't doing the same old stuff. And that includes me. ~ Noel Clarke

Youre only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! ~ Michael Caine

I think the British industry is set up to support British film, if we make films that enable them to support it. If you don't make a commercial film, distributors can't get behind it. If they don't get behind it, the film doesn't do well. ~ Noel Clarke

One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride. ~ Gurinder Chadha

Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity. ~ Mike Leigh

If there's a British film in the marketplace that is successful on a worldwide basis - whether it's 'A Room with a View,' 'Four Weddings' or 'The Full Monty' - money follows, and everyone tries to emulate that success. ~ Eric Fellner

'Viceroy' is the first British film about the Raj and the transfer of power from Britain to India made by a British Indian director. It is a British film made from an Indian perspective. ~ Gurinder Chadha

The British film industry has always tried to sell itself as something rather sophisticated. It's almost as if it thinks it is by royal command. It has always tried to claim the high ground, not only over Hollywood but over the whole of humanity! ~ Peter Capaldi

It begins and ends with money. It's absurd in this day and age when we need so much money for education, health, for people, that a $100 million dollars can be spent on a film. It's obscene. ~ Kathleen Turner

I think it's just a lot more pressure to make the scenes work when you're doing a film, because when you're doing a series you feel like, I have so many scenes, so many episodes, so if I don't get it exactly right this time, I have another scene later. You feel less pressure. ~ Chloe Sevigny

I come from a culture where you don't divide it up to what you can do on TV and what you can do on film. ~ Mads Mikkelsen

You've got to remember that films don't lead the way. People think that films are trying to lead society. Mostly, they're reflecting the moods and thoughts that are going on in the country or around the world. ~ George Clooney

In British culture, redheads get teased at school. But I've grown up enough to realize I love my hair. ~ Lily Cole

All students of disaster movies know that nothing survives these natural onslaughts except cats and the highest paid film stars. ~ Simon Jenkins

People like light and silly, and they like stuff that's really energetic, and you get a character in a film bouncing around and screaming, people laugh. That's all it takes. I don't find that funny. To me, what's funny is dialogue and nuance of character and performance. ~ Terry Zwigoff

I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of. ~ William Monahan

In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst. ~ Peter Greenaway

An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return. ~ Sidney Poitier

I think the first film you do with your instincts because you haven't learned with another director or you haven't worked on other films, so you tend to do things your own way. I think what I learned the most was to take your time, to try to be less rushed into things and have some distance with what you're doing. ~ Nadine Labaki

The conventional understanding of meritocracy is that it is a system for awarding or allocating scarce resources to those who most deserve them. The idea behind meritocracy is that people should achieve status or realize the promise of upward mobility based on their individual talent or individual effort. It is conceived as a repudiation of systems like aristocracy where individuals inherit their social status.

I am arguing that many of the criteria we associate with individual talent and effort do not measure the individual in isolation but rather parallel the phenomena associated with aristocracy; what we're calling individual talent is actually a function of that individual's social position or opportunities gained by virtue of family and ancestry. So, although the system we call "meritocracy" is presumed to be more democratic and egalitarian than aristocracy, it is in fact reproducing that which it was intended to dislodge.

Michael Young, a British sociologist, created the term in 1958 when he wrote a science fiction novel called The Rise of Meritocracy. The book was a satire in which he depicted a society where people in power could legitimate their status using "merit" as the justificatory terminology and in which others could be determined not simply to have been poor or left out but to be deservingly disenfranchised. ~ Lani Guinier

I'm a big fan of British cinema; I think we make some unbelievably brilliant films, but they can quite often have a dark feel. ~ Ed Speleers

By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule. ~ Bill Brandt

First play I ever did was 'Footloose.' I played the part of Willard when I was 16. I think I wore my drama teacher's jeans and her belt - that's how small I was. I know a lot of Willard's back story from the musical that's not explored in the film. Like he's got this whole relationship with his mama, and he sings this song 'Mama Says.' ~ Miles Teller

It's especially gratifying to have done a film like 'Eight Men Out' because it's hard not to have fun when there are so many bats and balls around. ~ D. B. Sweeney

I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society. ~ Paul Haggis

I think you're peripatetic when you work in this industry. My husband and I are assuming the role of co-artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. But as long as the film industry will have me, I will have it. ~ Cate Blanchett

VARANASI TRAFFIC is shambolic. It's a humbling reminder that the British drive on the left side of the road and we (Indians) drive on what's left of the road. "The traffic is not terrible at all," wrote novelist Geoff Dyer. "It is beyond any idea of terribleness. It is beyond any idea of traffic. ~ Guru Madhavan

It looks as if British democracy died a few years ago, and nobody noticed. ~ Steve Merrick

Eugenio Montale - born in Genoa in 1896, died in Milan, 1981 - is one of the twentieth-century Europeans who has spoken most meaningfully to American and British poets. ~ Jonathan Galassi

What's funny is that with my comedies I don't believe they're my best screenplays necessarily. They're just the ones that I wrote that I knew I could get financing, you know? I believe my other films could be better, but right now they're not being made. But they will eventually. ~ Julie Delpy

I think loads of people see acting, when they're kids, as these magical stories that just happen within the context of the film or the play or the cartoon or whatever they're seeing. They don't imagine that there are actually people that go and do that for a living. ~ Rebecca Hall

I could make a film in front of a wall if I knew how to find the data of man's true humanity and how to express it. ~ Luchino Visconti

Film making is an expensive, as well as a serious business. We should be able to entertain our audiences, who are fully aware of what they want. Every filmmaker has a different point of view and presents facets of society. ~ Rohit Shetty

I always thought it would be very funny if I was a blind film director. ~ Woody Allen

When you work on a graphic novel or a film with people you've been together through a lot and you've exposed your secrets and weaker sides to each other. ~ Etgar Keret

As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a right to crumbs from the rich man's table. ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

I was doing bad movies as a day job. And it almost ruined my life for a while. But I have done 130-odd films, and only fourteen have been spooky ones. Im not spooky! I want life! ~ Karen Black

I always have those feelings - lucky and blessed - and I don't know if they'll ever go away. I really hope they don't, as I think it keeps you grounded. That's how I feel about every film I do. ~ Teresa Palmer

Well, visual language is another boring discussion about the nature of film. ~ Alan Rudolph

I just like, when you look at people who have long careers in film, they're able to make films that are far away from themselves, because they're metaphorical. It creates more opportunities, I think. ~ Mike Birbiglia

I always direct the same film. I can't distinguish one from the other. ~ Federico Fellini

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, concludes his book The Conquest of Happiness by describing a happy person thus: "Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joy that it affords, untroubled by the thoughts of death because he feels himself not really separated from those who will come after him. It is in such a profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found. ~ Eric Weiner

Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake. ~ Lord Randolph Churchill

You don't want to be starting a film not knowing what you want to do. ~ Russell Crowe

I read a blog about this young filmmaker in the Philippines who made a short film, and one of the characters in the film reads my novel and then starts discussing the novel with someone. The idea that my book can inspire another artist and be part of that other artist's work ... that's the reason I write. ~ Miguel Syjuco

The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between modern civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that. ~ Robert Altman

My attitude towards the British is one of utter friendliness and respect. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I got so much out of 'The To-Do List.' This is a joke that I say about myself sometimes, in terms of my film career: I feel like I'm always playing the kid in serious adult movies. So, for me, it was so wonderful to suddenly be working with other people my age who were doing this on film. ~ Sarah Steele

Julia Roberts most definitely would play me in the film of my life. Not just because of the hair but because she has all sides to her personality come through in films that I could just imagine her playing my crazy self so well. ~ Jess Glynne