I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.
I've just always had a ...
Quotes from the same author
There's been more written about Lincoln than movies made about him or television portraying him. He's kind of a stranger to our industry, to this medium. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a movie that's just about Abraham Lincoln. I just found that my fascination with Lincoln, which started as a child, got to the point where after reading so much about him I thought there was a chance to tell a segment of his life to to moviegoers.
It's still a mystery to me, but even though my mother was like an older sister to me, I kind of put her up on a pedestal.
One of my daughters is a competitive jumper, we live with horses, we have stables on our property. But I don't ride. I observe, and I worry.
When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn't permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.
There's nothing self-serving about what motivated me to bring 'Schindler's List' to the screen.