Even when you're casting, casting is always one of the weirdest subjective areas. You can get a group of people who would decide and say, "This person is a great actor and this person is less than a great actor," but there will always be somebody else who likes that person better than you based on their experience in their other films.
Suzanne ToddJust watching Chris Nolan direct was amazing. He is one of the most lovely people, which as you know doesn't always go hand-in-hand with great directors. But with Christopher Nolan, and there's only a few I think like him in Hollywood, that's absolutely true.
Suzanne ToddYou want to put people together who will work well, and each movie kind of has its own personality in terms of how people are working or the temperature on set, and we want people who will fit in with that mix. It's one of the really important parts of it.
Suzanne ToddThe industry has changed in big ways. When I started making movies, the studios were not all owned by huge conglomerates, so the decisions were made in a very different way. Over the years, I've watched both the rise and the decimation and fall of the DVD as a portion of where you could generate revenue from making this kind of content. We've seen this change in the balance sheet on the international side of the ledger; it's now a much bigger percentage than it is on domestic, even though movies would have been previously really domestically driven.
Suzanne ToddI don't think actually that kind of ego check or "I could do better" mentality probably serves better in Hollywood, because it's definitely not a meritocracy. You can look at any number of careers and sort of see that they don't really make sense if it was only based on your movies working either creatively or financially. There are people that move ahead without that, and there are people that don't move ahead even if they did have that.
Suzanne ToddFor me and movies - and it is kind of similar to motherhood and raising your children - I always feel like there's more you can do, and I don't know if that's particularly a female quality. I don't know how dads feel, but there's definitely a never say die, no stone unturned, never give up a minute that you could be pushing it down the road and try to make it better.
Suzanne Todd