95 Quotes by Richard Attenborough

If I were able to write, I probably would. But movies have given me a part of my life where I can express feelings and bring convictions to an audience as if I could write. So I made 'Gandhi' about human relations, prejudice and the empire. In 'Cry Freedom' I expressed my horror and disgust about apartheid.

I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.

The old adage about acting - that it's 98% energy and 2% talent - is true, you know.

I know Pandit Ravi Shankar was very upset with me, as I did not use his compositions in 'Gandhi.' I thought that the London Philharmonic Orchestra would prove more effective than his music. It was one of my biggest miscalculations.

I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.

I always wanted to make films that might change or at least focus people's views.

I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'

'Gandhi' was a well-made film but surely not my best. It had flaws, which I understand two-and-a-half decades after I directed it. I will never call it a propaganda film for the Indian Congress, but it could have been made better had I concentrated on certain minute details.

'E.T.' depended absolutely on the concept of cinema, and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I'm very fond of, is a genius.