Quotes from Andrew Haigh

For me, all you want from your actor is for them to engage on a deeply emotional level with the material. If you feel like that happens, directing the actors is pretty much done at that point.

America is so diverse.

If I see someone break down in tears, I don't necessarily feel empathy for them in those moments unless it's really warranted. I feel like a tear needs to be warranted in a movie; it needs to be earned.

I was not a happy teenager in the slightest.

There's something about film that offers this opportunity to stick to a very, very clear single protagonist's point of view, and I like that.

I am fascinated by that person who is trying to live authentically, but they are on the outside of society, so how do they manage in the world around them?

SXSW can feel very male, very straight, and very white, and though it's a great festival, when you have a film that's different, it's hard to find your place.

Whoever my films are about, they'll hopefully still have my sensibility, whatever that is.

In the early stages of being out, you meet all these people from all kinds of backgrounds, and the one thing you have in common is you're all gay, but then you start to realise how different your experiences actually are.

Personally, I don't like to talk too much to the actors about the camera choices because I feel like the way I want them to perform is as if it feels very rooted in the real world and that I'm essentially stepping back and just watching and hoping they feel safe with me watching.

As a person, I am totally obsessed with the choices and decisions we make in our lives and how they dictate the course of our lives. Seemingly random choices that we make end up defining everything.

For a long time, gay men fought to be seen as different, doing our own thing: This is our lives; this is what we do. Accept it. There's a conservatism that has come into the gay community: 'We're just like you, just like everyone else.'

I don't want a performance to give me everything. You can look at Charlotte Rampling in '45 Years,' and you don't really know what she's thinking, but you know something interesting is happening.

The reality of our lives is never like what you see in those romantic comedies or dramas. Things don't always end good. Things don't usually end good.

You work really hard on something, and you know you can't always make great work. It just doesn't happen like that, I don't think, at least not for most people, anyways.

I love the fact that James Ivory made films about Britain, made 'Howards End' and 'The Remains of the Day,' or that Paul Thomas Anderson made 'Phantom Thread.' They're about Britishness, but they're from an American perspective. And I actually think they're fantastic in the way that they understand Britishness.

People like a bit of honesty in films.

I rode a horse once when I was young, and I fell off. I never wanted to ride a horse again.

Horses terrify me.

We have a choice every day to do whatever we do, and that choice is quite scary because it could absolutely change everything about our lives. It's important to keep reminding myself that I have a choice.

That's the biggest thing I struggle with. We could never hope to represent every gay person in America. There will be people who will say, 'Well, my experience of being gay isn't like that,' to which I can only say, 'That's fine.'

We pass people in the street and ignore them when they're clearly suffering. It makes you wish we could all feel when someone needs something.

In the end, with all of my films, I want to understand the continuity between these films and understand what they're trying to do.

We get older, and we get more wrinkles, but fundamentally, we stay the same... You have the same fears and doubts and concerns and dreams and passions and all those kinds of things, so I feel like you don't change as much as you think you do.