68 Quotes by Tom Hooper

Sometimes your body language is enough for an actor to know that you’re not happy. And you don’t really need to say it out loud if you deal with actors you know very well. And I don’t think you really need to be explicit.

In ‘The King’s Speech,’ patriotism is utterly contained within a historical moment, the third of September, 1939, where the aggressor is clear, the fight is clear, it hasn’t become complicated over time.

After my grandfather’s plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.

Trans stories have now entered the mainstream in this fantastic way, but the most important thing is what follows from that is hopefully a shift in the experience of trans people – so that there’s more acceptance in the culture to the issues they face and more support.

I think I would say ‘The King’s Speech’ is surprisingly funny, in fact the audiences in London, Toronto, LA, New York commented there’s more laughter in this film than in most comedies, while it is also a moving tear-jerker with an uplifting ending.

If you look at Shakespeare’s history plays, what the setting of monarchy allows is this extraordinary intensification of emotions and predicament.

With the coming of radio as a mass medium, suddenly the world changed. It became about, ‘Can this leader project emotional connection through the way he speaks on the radio?’ And the anxiety about whether he could do that, we’ve inherited.

Films about the English monarchy, they tend to have a lavishness, sumptuous imagery, it’s all very posh and rich.

I mean, we’ve all had those dreams where, you know, we try to cry out and our voice won’t come.