Happy Birthday: John Schlesinger (1926–2003)

John Schlesinger (1926–2003)

Born: February 16, 1926 in Hampstead, London, England, UK
Died: July 25, 2003 (age 77) in Palm Springs, California, USA

To be a director, you have to be a very good actor, because you’ve got to leave actors with a shred of pleasure at doing what they’re doing, and if they think you admire them and like them in the role, that’s all for the good.

[on “Method” acting] [Dustin Hoffman] is a great believer in physical acting. Whenever we had to do a running scene–you know, most actors would just say, “Well, just dab a bit of glycerin on my face, and I’ll look sweaty.” Not so with Dustin. He had to run right round the 91st Street area of Central Park, so that he was really out of breath, which has always made me curious as to what they do when they’re going to enact someone murdering somebody. Or having sex.

I like making films that have question marks in them and are not all tied up beautifully with a pink ribbon, even though that’s what the audience seems to want, and if you give it to them there’s more assurance of commercial success, perhaps. But that’s never the way I’ve seen life or reflected life in what I want to put on the screen.

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