Stephen Frears - Directors on Actors & Actors on Directors

updated: November 11, 2009

Stephen Frears was born in 1941 in Leicester, U.K. He read law at Cambridge University, and became an assistant to Lindsay Anderson at London’s Royal Court Theatre. After working as an assistant on Morgan, If?., Charlie Bubbles, and O Lucky Man! he enjoyed acclaim for his first feature, Gumshoe, a spoof on the traditional crime movie made in 1972. His major successes since have been achieved in both Britain and America: The Hit, My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons [Les Liaisons Dangereuses], The Grifters, High Fidelity, and Dirty Pretty Things. In 1999 he won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale, for The Hi-Lo Country. His latest film is Mrs. Henderson Presents, due for release in 2005.

Getting Started

Stephen Frears: I was like most directors who come out of Britain: I was a bright boy down from the universities. I actually couldn't get into the normal things, and then I went to work at the Royal Court Theatre, where I met a series of directors, and I was apprenticed to a wonderful man called Karel Reisz and a wonderful director called Lindsay Anderson. I was a sort of pupil.

Then eventually I made a film – and then people started employing me. So I started to learn how to do my job, and then eventually a friend of mine wrote a script - I suppose he wrote it for me - and he turned out to be a brilliant fellow. He wrote a wonderful script of a film which we made, called Gumshoe. I'd also worked with Albert Finney, so I went to Albert and asked him if he'd like to be in it. He said yes. So I had to learn by making films.

Then I just made a lot of television films. That was all. And then one day I thought, "Oh, I see, I can actually do this." So I was like an apprentice for a long time. Or I felt I was. Until I was in my mid-forties.

Well, you develop confidence because you grow older – and that will probably happen to you. If you're very lucky, you grow older and remain childish at the same time. I suppose you learn about life, really. You start to understand the connection between films, or what it is you do, and life. And that will happen. It can't not happen.

Actors Right for One Part and Not for Another

You might find an actor who you simply can't tell the story around. If you put that person in the part, the story just collapses. I assume that most of the people who come to see me when I’m casting a film are all very, very talented.

You sit there and the casting director says, "Oh, this bloke's really good and this person's terrific, or well, not so good at that." It never seems to me to be a great deal to do with that. There are certain kinds of work that require a certain expertise. I suppose if you work that out you go to the right people for it. I'm always amazed by the talent of actors. I don't have a sense of actors being untalented, I have a sense of them being right for one part and not for another.

If they're not right, you shouldn't have cast them. You can't, I think, take someone from over here to over there. They tend to be what they are. They're this tall, and this ugly, or this beautiful, or this fat, or this whatever, this vulnerable, this kind of person, this guy's frightening, that guy isn't. There's not a lot you can do about that, so it's really just how you make those decisions at a very early stage. Actors Right for One Part and Not for Another

Bringing the Project to Life

For me, everything sort of slightly comes to life at a certain point in pre-production. It's – I don't know, I'm going to sound like God – it’s as though you start to create a whole universe. Not only the universe of the film, but the universe of the people around you making the film. I like all of that very much. I come to life, people say, at that point. I'm probably ashamed of this, but it's what happens. It's like falling in love, really.

Getting a Reaction

When somebody has to be scared, you fire a blank at the ceiling. It's as simple as that. The situations that films offer are often quite straightforward. I've never come across someone who was particularly baffled by that. That's what actors are good at, isn't it?

Choosing the Camera Set-up

You can either photograph the person speaking or you can photograph the person listening. They're both equally important. I remember when I made Les Liaisons Dangereuses, you could either look at the person speaking or you could look at the person being spoken to. There isn't a third alternative, really.

Resolving "Creative Differences"

Well, there are these things called "other people". They're a nightmare. And so is your mother and your teachers and everybody. Yes, other people are a nightmare.

First of all, arguments only arise when there is a problem. If you create a problem, then I'm not surprised that there are arguments. The great thing is not to anticipate it. I don't live in a world of that sort of conflict and that kind of fighting. And anyway, generally speaking, when you work it out, actually the problem simply goes away.

But the world is full of nasty people who don't think like me, I'm afraid!

Dirty Pretty Things

I was sent a script. I wasn't going around thinking, "Oh, I'd like to make a film about organ transplants." I was sent a script and on page 7 it said: “They cut the organ out, they cut the kidney out, and put it...? So, I was sent a script and I thought it was good, a good story.

I cast it very attentively and in great detail. I could tell you where I made a mistake. I won't tell you, but I could. There's one bad bit of casting in it.

It was half a good script. And I suppose we then took a year to get it into the script that we eventually filmed. In fact I would only commit to making the film when it was in a form that fitted just right, and I said, "Fine! I'll now commit."

Earlier, when I first read it, I wasn't prepared to commit. In some rather monstrous way I set myself a challenge. "I am the prize. If you want to win me, you have to get to this stage." And the writer and various people got to that stage and then it was a pleasure to commit.

If my films have any qualities, it's because I have good actors in them. There was a moment when I thought, "What if.. I don't know where all these people live – Turkish girls and Africans. So there was a sort of bad night. And then next day I met Audrey Tautou and Sergi López, and then we simply went and found people to play each part.

Bringing the Cast Together

I have a wonderful casting director whom I adore - and you start looking. I didn't quite know where we were going to look, though.

I thought for the African we'd probably cast him out of Paris. I knew there were African actors in Paris because Claire Denis makes films about Africans in Paris, so I knew there were Africans in Paris. So you just start looking. And that's who we found. We stopped when we found them. So, yes, it's as thorough as it should be. Once I met Audrey and Sergi particularly, I stopped at that point, because they were so interesting. And you just go on and on like that.

I remember, there's that wonderful man from Mali who's in the film, the one with the wound, I remember meeting him in Paris and he's part of Peter Brook's theatre company. The producers kept wanting me to shoot those scenes and I said, "No, no, no, I'll do them later." And they had no idea and then of course when I turned up this wonderful man they all said, "Oh, now I see why you were..." So it was a sort of game. I can get this person here and this person there, and I can hold it all together.

Building the Suspense

It always seemed to me that when you have a story that starts with a heart coming out of a lavatory, you are on a strong position. In other words, it was so mysterious and so compelling that you had something that interested people. Then the story seemed to involve suspense, so I guess we were always looking to shoot it like a thriller.

There's one sequence which I started to plot, like a Hitchcock sequence, but then I never carried it through to the end. But I found it very, very interesting that you could break things down in a way that I've never done before. It seemed to me it was a thriller, so if you say it's got suspense, then I'm really pleased, because that means it succeeded.

Working with the Actors

In Dirty Pretty Things there were three actors who didn't speak English. The best thing I did, it seemed to me, was not to have a read-through – on the grounds that it would just depress everybody because the struggle with language is so enormous. I had a very, very good voice coach; I scheduled the film so they would have days off in order to prepare the next scene.

You couldn't suddenly change the dialogue because all their heads would swivel and you would see the panic in their eyes. And I didn't have a read-through.

The truth is, I'm not very good about rehearsals, because I don't really understand. Sitting in rooms or marking floors – it doesn't really mean anything to me. It really only makes sense when I'm standing in a room with a camera – in the right room with a camera. Then I can start to see the architecture of a scene.

But on Les Liaisons Dangereuses I did spend a week being completely bewildered – a week, I remember, with John Malkovich and Glenn Close, and a week with Michelle Pfeiffer.

Glenn was pregnant, so we were rehearsing before she had the baby. And then she had the baby as we started shooting and then she came to Paris. So I'm not really the person to talk to about rehearsal. The truth is, I'm not very interested in how actors get to their performance. Somebody else, clearly, someone like Elia Kazan was really interested in that.

By a system of provocation or something you get the actors up to the pitch you want to be. The truth is, the most important thing that I always find is making sure that everybody's in the same film. John Gielgud, the great English actor, said, "If you're lucky you know what film you're in." I just expect them all to turn up on the first day and be dazzling. And if they're not, they're fired.

Tell People Where the Game Is...

I remember a film I made called The Grifters, just getting everybody to sit in a room and slowly you could see, "Oh, I see, it's that kind of film where blondes are like this and men are like..." – you know what I mean, all that B movie stuff. And they could see that, and so everybody started on the same footing. "Oh, we're making this film and not that film." So I find that quite important, that you have to tell people where the game is.

Question: How do you get good parts if you don’t want to sell sex?

Stephen Frears: This city [Berlin] used to be divided. There was a communist sector and a capitalist sector. Clearly capitalism won. It is, in its own way, tragic. You want a lecture on capitalism. Yes, they sell sex, it's shocking.

There are a few sensitive idiots like me who don't deal in sex and we are very, very stupid.

You cast people for complicated reasons. You certainly cast them for sexual reasons among other things. It would be foolish to deny that that's an element in it. I did once work out that American actresses were all driven mad because it is so rough, the pressures on them are so tough. They either go mad or they become comedians as a way of dealing with just men or the world... The whole thing is sort of vile, isn't it? You go to the cinema and comment, "Oh, her nose isn't very nice," or "She's a bit skinny."

Working with First Time Actors

Actors have a sort of economic value. And, I suppose because I tried, tried and rather failed, to make expensive films, I started making less expensive films. If you don't have much money, of course, you depend on people being more talented rather than less talented. In other words, you can only compete with very, very talented people. I guess that's what happens.

I remember two or three years ago going around saying, "Oh, all these white American actors are very dull. It's black actors or Hispanic actors that are the interesting ones."

I just go where things are interesting, to a place that I find interesting, and it seems to involve these actors.

Hating Storyboards

One of the things that I always think I'm rather lucky about is that I don't have this thing called visions. People say, "Have you got a vision for the film?" and I always say, "No, I don't have a thought in my head." I tend to work with very, very good designers and cameramen and I tend to find them much more interesting that any thoughts I might have. I really conduct a conversation with them.

I never rely on storyboards. They seem to me the worst things in the world. This notion that just because Hitchcock could do it all on a piece of paper doesn't mean that anybody else can. I think they're absolutely anathema.

Question: Do you break up your scenes?

Stephen Frears: You break them up instinctively, don't you? It's not very difficult to break up a scene. You know, oh well, it starts here and then there's going to be a bit over here and she comes in and whatever it is. I'm sufficiently experienced that I've learnt that isn't a cause for great anxieties. And also I notice that whenever I would think, "Oh, now we should do this and this and this," that actually the cameraman has a much better idea that didn't involve that rather idiotic dividing that I'd done.

In other words, I try to bring the scene to life and then to catch the bits I want. That might involve on occasion a very structured shot. If you want to do a very structured shot, you clearly have to think of that ahead of time, but often scenes are quite straightforward. So no, I hate storyboards.

Not Isolating the Elements

When they asked me to come here and talk about acting, I said, "I've just been teaching in Norway and they think there is something called acting." Well I don't know what that is. All I know is that you make a scene with script and actors and a camera. It's everything that interests me. All you discover is that you need more and more detail, that in the end bits of costume and tiny little details start to gel. You remind yourself, "Oh, I should have thought of that. I'll have to concentrate on that next time." So I don't isolate any of the elements. In my mind they're all completely fused.

Preparing To Be Unprepared

If you film in the way that I'm describing, you have to be very, very attentive to what you arrive in the room with. You have to arrive with a good piece of writing and people who are well chosen and if you want to use a crane you have to have booked it or whatever it is, you have to park the trucks over there and not over there because you're going to put... All of that stuff you have to have arranged beforehand... It requires very, very careful preparation in order to be unprepared. To be spontaneous you have to be very, very calculating in some complicated way. Everything must be cleared in advance, so that the moment of what one might generously call creativity isn't hindered by the absence of what you find out that you need.

Question: You must have a method of approaching actors?

Stephen Frears: Is what I'm describing now a method? No, I have great admiration for actors and I cast them very carefully. What do you mean? Saying "Good morning" and "Hello"? It's all quite straightforward.

Question: And in case an actor is not as good as you expected, do you have to do something about it?

Stephen Frears: This generally means there's a problem. Something has gone wrong or there's something distracting or there's some quite straightforward obstacle that has to be cleared away, probably in the actor's head or something like that. Often there's some misunderstanding. It's very, very seldom that it's due to lack of talent. It isn't because they're no good or something like that. It's more complex than that.

I remember – again, on Dangerous Liaisons – shooting a scene with John Malkovich where he says to Michelle Pfeiffer, "It's beyond my control," and he behaves appallingly. We started shooting that and it wasn't working... it started to dwindle. We stopped for about two hours. There was something that John was trying to sort out in his mind. It took a couple of hours and then he sorted it out, and then you had to go very, very fast before he muddled himself up again.

So you try to create a place in which all these people need not be frightened, not be nervous, and not let themselves down.

Question: So you give actors scripts?

Stephen Frears: I give them a script. I remember once watching a documentary about Charles Laughton and they interviewed Robert Mitchum, who was in Night of the Hunter, as good a film as could be made. The person doing the documentary said, "What did Charles Laughton say to you?" Robert Mitchum said, "Well, he said nothing." And the person said, "No, of course he did, he said, 'Well, today we're doing Page 34.'"

Why would you imagine that the actor can't do all that by himself? Whatever process actors go through to get to that position, that's fine by me. And whatever they do, they are also artists and they're intelligent people and, generally speaking, they can sort it out for themselves. So I trust them.

I don't, in my experience, find actors to be prima donnas. All actors want to be is good. And once they're being good, they're happy. Like everybody, they are insecure at certain moments. So I don't start, really, from the same place as you.

They actually expose themselves in a way that none of us do, so I'm so consumed with admiration at this act of bravery. I think they should be given medals for courage, not for talent.

Being John Malkovich

Question: During those two hours when John Malkovich had to sort things out on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, did you send him off by himself and work around that?

Stephen Frears: No, there was nothing else to do. There was absolutely nothing else one could do. There was nothing else to shoot. There were people in Warner Bros. in Burbank going bananas – “They’ve stopped!? They were going ballistic.

And I did say a rather unpleasant thing. I said, "Look, if we don't have this scene, we don't really have a film, so good luck!" But he sorted it out. I was always saying nasty things to John. He had a very, very good Scots actor playing his servant. I used to say to him, "Why can't you act as well as him?" He was wonderful in the film.

You put all these people together and somehow it sorts itself out, I find. I have conversations with everybody; I argue with people, I conduct a series of conversations.

And I'm abused by women on the set. I have a lot of women on the set who abuse me. They're always saying, "Oh God, this is boring. We've done this bit. Can't we do something more interesting that this?" That goes on. I have a good time.

Being Sergi López

I can remember Sergi López. The language problems were enormous and we were doing a driving scene and Sergi was driving, and he just got into a mess. Sergi's a dazzling actor and how he did it in English I've no idea.

But one night we were doing a driving shot in the centre of London and a particularly irritating person had somehow boxed us in, so we were having to tow the car. If you tow a car, that means that the wheels are locked, so someone who naturally drives can't drive, because their wheels don't turn – they have to pretend to drive. And this completely threw him. My contribution to this scene was to go and shoot it again and to tell the person to shut up and we would just do it normally. It was very, very striking how paralysed he was by this insensitivity which just completely devastated him.

Question: How much ahead do you think in terms of music?

Stephen Frears: Not at all.

Question: Has there ever been a point when you were shooting and suddenly somehow you realised that there was something wrong with the script, and so you had to go back and change it?

Stephen Frears: Yes, I've made films and realised that there was something wrong. In my experience it's always the writing that's wrong, or it always goes back to a problem in the writing, which of course you should have solved before you turned up.

I remember making a film called The Van. you can tell when films are going well because you get very involved with the characters. I remember Michelle Pfeiffer dying in Les Liaisons Dangereuses – it was very, very upsetting, you felt like you would hope the audience were feeling. You instinctively wanted to cry. So you know when things go right, you know when it has the emotional response that you would expect it to have.

On this occasion on The Van, I expected this response and it wasn't there. The actors were fine; they were doing the right things. So then you slowly start to work out, "Oh, I see, it wasn't there because we'd made mistakes in the writing, probably earlier on."

Catching the Spontaneous Moment

Stephen Frears: It seems to me the more that comes from the actors – or the cameraman – the more that arises spontaneously, or out of the air, I find that's the really good stuff, that's the stuff you want to catch.

Question: Are you ever in a situation where you're actually not sure what to do?

Stephen Frears: Oh, most of the time, yes. I always think that when I see it I know it, but generally speaking with films I don't quite know what it is I'm looking for. But when it appears, I recognise it. So you create a world in which that possibility is there.

I trust my instincts entirely. And I like to have the writer there, so that there are other people following other bits, things that I don't have to think about – “He’s doing it for this reason and this reason and this" – so there are other people who are aware of those things going on, but I like to do it so that it's completely instinctive. So that on a good day it just comes out of the air.

Tackling the Structure

Stephen Frears: I've actually started employing what they call a dramaturge. He isn’t quite like a story editor... He isn't a script editor either, but he's there to help the writer release the work in some way. I find that takes a great weight off things, because he's a very clever man and he does understand about structures.

There clearly are structures. However much you try to demolish them, other structures arise. There's a script that I'm involved in at the moment and I say, well, there isn't a third act, so clearly I use that language if necessary. But I wouldn't know how to generate a third act. I depend on a writer to do that.

Question: Do you make mental cuts as you work?

Stephen Frears: I cut in my head. I cut in the camera. Yes. On the floor. I don't mean that I work it all out on a piece of paper beforehand. You break a scene down into bits and you pre-cut it.

It's more interesting to make the decisions on the floor. Of course, there is also coverage going on at the same time, but actually making the decisions, being decisive at that point, is very important.

You can't make any mistake, because you're actually taking a clear line through it. I can see it might lead to a dull film, but I don't quite see, if you're being decisive, how it could lead to a mistake. Well, you sometimes go home and think, "Oh God, I forgot to do that shot. I meant to do that bit."

No, it becomes apparent what is important in a scene, and you're skilful and the cameraman is saying, "Look, we've got to get that bit. We've got to see his gun," or whatever it is that you're showing. It's often quite straightforward. And then you want to see this character and you want to see this character and you want to see this person say that. I don't find that very difficult.

Question: How much do you like improvisation?

Stephen Frears: I don't like it at all. I'm just not interested in it.

Question: Do you stick with the script?

Well, changing a line doesn't seem to be the same as improvisation. I wouldn't know how to make an improvised film.

Question: High Fidelity has a relatively free feel to it compared to your other films ...

Stephen Frears: Every word was written. Jack Black would sometimes improvise or be dirty, but he always wanted to get back to the script. It's better if the scene is done economically and gracefully. I seldom find actors who can improvise as interestingly as the original writer has written.

I spend a lot of time thinking how to get the actors off to a cheerful start. So, let’s begin with this particular scene, whatever it is, or this bit isn't too demanding. You just attend to their anxieties and needs.

I remember I shot the end of Dirty Pretty Things far too soon. You get boxed in and you can't manoeuvre. But we re-shot it.

Something Coming from Inside

Stephen Frears: Starting a film is like jumping off a cliff. It's like a sort of therapy in an odd sort of way. It always seems to be like going into the unknown. You never quite know where you're going towards. And afterwards you think, "Oh, I say, I was interested in that for these reasons." It slowly emerges, you slowly work out why you were drawn to that.

It seems to me that what I was talking really about was something more unconscious, something coming from inside, which I don't want to articulate or interrupt or define. All sorts of complicated things emerge, and is all to do about what's enjoyable in the cinema as well as what's appropriate to the scene. All of those things. The less conscious it is, it seems to me, the better.

Covering for Robert Altman

Stephen Frears: For some reason I was involved with Gosford Park because Robert Altman was quite old, and so they had to have someone called an “insurance cover.? So because I'm so young, I was asked if I would do it, and I said yes.

But I imposed certain conditions, like I didn't have to read the script, or I didn't have to turn up or anything like that. When I saw the film – or I saw a cut of the – I said to him, "Oh, I wish you had died. I'd have liked a go at this."

Lucky in the Early Stages

Question: When you were at our stage, still formulating your approach, your technique, what were some of the experiences that helped you?

Stephen Frears: I was very lucky about the material I filmed. I think I probably had quite good taste in material so I fell into directing stuff that was extremely well written, by really brilliant writers, and I trusted them, and was able to learn. I could lean on them, quite heavily. In a way, if I think, I was born with that taste and it has never really let me down.

The world was so different then that situations arose that I could operate in. I really learnt by making films, but the films I made were almost always extremely well written and in their tone quite similar to the work I do now.

I didn't really want to be a film-maker... People in those days didn't want to be film directors. It wasn't a job that was on the menu!

When I was in my teens, I fell in love with a troupe of actors, so I ran away to join the theatre. I worked at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Then, when I made a film – in truth, I discovered that I could get work as a film director so I could earn a wage, which was really the most important thing, and work for companies and become a citizen. In short, become a human being rather than something more adolescent and painful.

I went on doing that, and I started to be employed, and then one day I did think, "Oh, I see I can actually do this and this is a very, very interesting... So I didn't really take myself seriously as a film director for about fifteen years.

Casting Michelle Pfeiffer and Anjelica Huston

I remember when Michelle Pfeiffer's name was suggested for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and I flew to California and there was a plan to meet at a certain time. She rang me up and said, "I can't come. I'm not feeling well," or something like that. I said, "Well, I've come 3,000 miles, so you'd jolly well better come." I thought, "Oh, goodness..." I didn't really know anything about her. I hadn't really seen her in any films and I thought, "Well, actually, this is a quite sophisticated play. This woman might well be rather intimidated by this."

I remember her reading. I made her read – and she read very, very badly – with the writer, but there was a moment when she was on the floor looking up at him and you could just see that men fell in love with her. You could see absolutely the whole thing laid out, really. Then I remember watching a reel from Married to the Mob and realising that the woman was absolutely brilliant and that I'd been utterly ridiculous in imagining that she would be out of her depth. So there was something that made me understand why you would cast that woman – because in the end it's a story about a man who falls in love with a woman. I could see why you would fall in love with her. When you look in her eyes, you can see that look. So I would say that it's observation rather than whether she can improvise well or do whatever it is other people do. So I would reduce it to a purely human quality.

I remember when I cast The Grifters. Being at the first day of pre-production and being in a hotel in Los Angeles, Sissy Spacek came to see us – I was there with Scorsese – and she was great. Afterwards she went out and I said, "She'd be terrific." She looked like a piece of white trash, basically, and you could see that you could make an absolutely coherent film with her in the central character.

Then, half an hour later, Anjelica Huston walked in and it was like a completely different film. She was rather dazzling so we settled on her. But you could either make this film or you could make that film. At that moment of choice you were actually at the crossroads: you could go there or you could go there.

What role does experience play in that? You were offered two alternatives and you could spin a coin or... I don't know how you make decisions. We made that decision. We'll never know how good poor Sissy Spacek would have been in The Grifters.

In a sense, the choosing of the people is part of making the film. The project only comes to life for me when I start to cast it. The combination of actor and character becomes so entrancing and so entertaining.

Question: How do you learn your craft?

Stephen Frears: By making films. There isn't any other way you can learn. You think by sitting in this room with me you're going to learn something. Absolutely not. I promise you, you'll learn nothing. However, if you make a film, you'll suddenly... "Oh, that's what that bugger was going on about!"

I went through a period when I was making television films in England, and I would go and see films and then I'd notice a shot and think, "Ah! I'll try that one out." And I would try and do that particular shot in the next day's shooting. And people were always saying to me, "How did you do those bits?"

Good films always inspire you. For me, it was the nouvelle vague and Renoir, and people like that.

When I was teaching once, watched a lot of student rushes, I did discover you could tell everything about the film in question. I can't tell anything from my own rushes, but you can tell everything from other people's rushes – what they've had for breakfast, whether they’re muddled... You can just see the confusion in front of you. And you can see the moments of clarity. Well, all you're trying to do is to reach that moment of clarity.

Question: What happens if you feel it’s all going wrong?

Stephen Frears: Kill the writer. I don't know. You mean in a large sense, you don't mean within a scene. If it's within a scene, you can get the writer in and do something about it. There is that awful moment when you think, "Oh, I see, we're making the wrong film," or, "This isn't working. It's horrible." You always know it before anybody else. It's awful.

On Hollywood

Stephen Frears: I suppose that I'm good at handling a hundred people on set or location. Periodically I say to God, "Could you let the sun out?" and He does. The truth is, that films without restrictions are worse than films with restrictions, so eventually you come to realise that restrictions are in their own way quite helpful, because you're forced to invent something. The problem with Hollywood, I found, was that you could have anything and they would give you anything and you could do anything, and it actually didn't bring the best out in me. My films are quick-witted. The qualities that are on offer are free, really. It's just somebody's intelligence.

The Editing Stage

Stephen Frears: I work very closely with an editor. Often I will speak to him while he is watching the rushes for the first time. He will describe the process whereby shots develop into clearer and clearer expressions. He’ll say, you know, “Oh, I see, it's getting clearer, it's getting clearer,? and then of course when you achieve the moment of clarity and the gesture is eloquent you finish. You stop at that point.

What tends to happen is that I let my editor do the first cut. I really don't say anything to him and he does the first cut. Then there's a period when I very, very slowly remember what it was that caught my imagination. There might be a gesture or there might be a way of saying a line, or there might be a moment of framing and composition, something that arrested my attention. Then slowly I go through the rushes and: "Oh, I remember, I really like that bit because..." and we'll then try and get that into the film. I find the reasons.

If you make a film today, I direct it and then twenty-five people produce it. I remember early on – maybe I'm very slow or something but – people would say, "Oh, well you should do such and such." They would speak with great authority and I would think, "They sound as though they know what they're talking about." And it was a very long time before I started to say, well no, actually, what I was doing was this, and actually reintroducing into the film what I'd invented on the floor, simply because the process was not helped by the number of people speaking so authoritatively. It took a long time for me to regurgitate all the stuff that had been going on at a lower depth.

I didn't really start cutting Dirty Pretty Things until we were dubbing it. When we were dubbing it, I started to edit it and then by good fortune I got away with it. But it took me that long to say, well no, actually, actually what I remember thinking was that and then that and then that. It must have taken three or four months that I was just in a muddle, distracted.

Your Entity Emerges

Stephen Frears: If you make films, what I've discovered is that who you are, your identity or whatever it is, emerges. That actually this obsessive desire to impose yourself on things isn't necessary. In other words, I've discovered that freedom, giving freedom to other people, isn't contradictory to self-expression.

I can't tell you what anybody else does. Every film-maker does it differently. Slowly you discover that if you do this, actually it works and something comes to life in front of you.

I once saw an interview with Billy Wilder. At the end he turned to the interviewer and said, "It's very, very kind of you, but I think you're mistaking me for a serious person." That’s how I feel when you ask me these kinds of questions. People bring you stories that you bring to life. That's really the best I can do. The stories I choose are who I am.

I'm attracted to the material that I'm attracted to. I don't know why, perhaps because I prefer to operate on a more unconscious level. A script came in last night that I'd been waiting fifteen months for, and I'll read it this week. And I hope it's really good. So I'm nervous, right now. Because I'm going to read something and I can't bear the idea that it might be a disappointment.