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.
— Andrew Haigh
I'm happy to do gay material, and I'm gay, and I'm not embarrassed about it, but it's nice not being limited to only doing gay material.
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.
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.
In my own life, my parents divorced when I was young. I lived with my dad, not with my mum, after they got divorced. And it's been part of my life.
There have been some good British gay films.
The kinds of films I like are the ones that take their time. If you reach an emotional pinnacle too early on in a film, that's kind of it. I think, as in real life, when you're getting to know someone, it starts off slowly.
The endings to me are the key moment in 'Weekend' and '45 Years.' I know how I want my gut to feel at the ending. Even if I can't articulate in words what that feeling is, I'm trying to find ways to get there.
Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.
Lynne Ramsay's 'Ratcatcher' blew me away when it came out. When I started making short films, I would watch that film over and over again, marvelling at how that story visually unfolded.
I went through a period of watching probably too many Bergman films in a row. I felt like I'd discovered the answer to what cinema should be.
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.
I rode a horse once when I was young, and I fell off. I never wanted to ride a horse again.
If you don't open your eyes to other people's lives, you can't even begin to understand how the world works at all.
I feel like, throughout lots of my life, especially growing up, I felt powerless.
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.'
I think the gay community is made up of so many little different things, different parts, different people... I think that can be quite hard for people. You think you've found your tribe, but actually, that isn't your tribe, and then you have to keep searching for what kind of makes sense.
Our lives are largely made up of a series of mundane moments, but those little moments are often the finesse that shapes our entire existence; it's not necessarily the big, dramatic events, although they do, too, of course.
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.
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.
I'm really bad at knowing if something I've done is any good. I can't work it out; I can't be objective about anything I do.
Men are both bad and awful. And women are both bad and awful. And they can both be good and wonderful on both sides.
Of course everyone should have the right to get married. But I think people need to remember sometimes that we don't all need to be the same. There's thousands of different types of relationships that people can have, whether it's completely monogamous or it's not monogamous, or they're married, or they're single or whatever it is.
Certain people like the way I make films, and others do not. I've come to terms with the fact that there's no other way I can make films. If I tried to do it in a different way, it would never work.
I like going to a new environment with open eyes.
For me, it's very important that shows about gay people are messy and complicated and are truthful about what we do.
When I was growing up, I was watching fairly standard American cinema.
'Looking' was always a niche show for a niche within a niche. It's a gay-themed show, so you're not going to get millions of straight people watching it - that's the inevitability of it.
Coming from a different perspective on a society is really interesting. I love the Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Phantom Thread,' and that's a version of Britishness and Englishness made by an American.
You can't expect to connect with everybody, and that's all right. The more I make films, I'm learning that you don't have to make films for everybody. A film can be made for a smaller group of people than that, and it still warrants an existence.
It's always important to try and get a real sense of the world around my characters. I especially think it helps actors.
I've traveled a fair amount around the country and visited many states. It's amazing that Oregon is so different from Idaho; even though Portland isn't that far from Boise, it's a completely different city. Colorado is very different from Oregon. From a European perspective, I've always found that fascinating about America.
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.
Being gay, you're kind of forced to ask, I suppose, very existential questions from a very, very early age. Your identity becomes so important to you because you're trying to understand it, and, I think, from the age of, like, 9, you're being forced to ask questions... that other kids maybe don't have to ask.
I think the films that work the best are the ones that seem to be about one thing but then, under the surface, bubbling away, are lots more important questions that you're not really aware of, and when you leave the cinema, your mind is ablaze with different thoughts!
I think all of my male characters, I suppose, in all of my films, they're not necessarily the traditional version of masculinity.
I think there's always a conflict within me about being comfortable and secure and then being an individual and fighting for what I want to be on an individual basis.
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.
It's always very important that you can completely disagree with someone, but it doesn't fundamentally mean that they are bad people.
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.'
We can all understand that feeling of being alone in the world trying to find ways to not be alone.
If you don't have money or you come from a background that doesn't have money, it's harder to achieve your ambition in life. It's not that you can't, but it becomes harder. Inequality is one of the worst things that can exist in our society, so I am interested in those kind of things.
I don't believe in 'happy ever after' at all as a concept.
My influences are all over the place. Different films have spoken to me at different times in my life, and they've helped create my idea of the kind of films I want to make.
If I can do a scene in one shot, it's in one shot. Most of my shots are pretty long. I think with 'Looking,' what we have in the first minute is a whole episode of a traditional TV show. I like to let things breathe; I like to let things have a certain tone.
Horses terrify me.
I would certainly not support Trump in any way shape or form, but I want to have sympathy.
If you're struggling, it's easy to feel powerless until you take control of it and assert what you want. I can understand that feeling. I can understand how it feels to be alone, to not want to get help from people and to not trust people who are actually wanting the best for you. I feel like that's true for a lot of people, actually.
America is so diverse.
People's lives often don't turn out as they expect.
