71 Quotes by Peter Mullan

In terms of popular cinema, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is as near perfection as I can think of.

In the acting game, you spend a long time fighting against what the director perceives you to be. And half the time the directors don’t know.

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it’s only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn’t just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn’t tolerate this anymore.

Just in relation to women, it’s not that huge an imaginative leap to see the connection between the Taliban and the Catholic Church.

The Vatican has tried to condemn ‘The Magdalene Sisters’ as a pack of lies and that I’ve made it all up – I wish I was that good a dramatist – and in terms of public relations, that was the daftest thing they ever did.

A lot of actors aren’t particularly good directors. And they’re not particularly good with other actors. That’s kind of a fallacy.

It’s not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn’t turn out as it could have done, I’d feel as if I’d orphaned my baby.

Part of the reason why movie bosses are so obsessed with crime movies is because they know that world and the criminals. And that’s what they are – they would not hesitate to act illegally to achieve profit and gain.