Jude Law

“Yeah, I was hoping I would find a Tarkovsky. So Stalker, I think Stalker was my introduction to Andrei Tarkovsky. It was my discovery of stillness in film and Andrei Rublev of course. But that's that's a real favorite of mine and I haven't seen it in years, so I'm happy to have found it.”

“So this holds a very special place in my heart, Purple Noon or Plein Soleil, which was the first realization of The Talented Mr. Ripley, or Patricia Highsmith's Talented Mr. Ripley. And of course I was recommended this by Anthony Minghella. A little like the series that's on at the moment, Ripley, it demonstrates how this incredible character from this book can be interpreted in so many different ways, because it's very different to The Talented Mr. Ripley that I made with Minghella. If anything, to choose Delon to play Ripley himself. And they don't change it from the book that he's a painter, in the film what I did, we made him a musician. It's got lots of twists and turns, the same color blue in the sea as our one, and not quite as dark as the Ripley on TV at the moment.”

“This is a wonderful film. I was turned onto this by another filmmaker who wanted me to see it as inspiration for a film I made with him, The Wages of Fear. Now if I'm really honest I didn't even know... So it's a Henri-Georges Clouzot. You'll probably learn from me I don't remember names, but I remember experiences. This film is about men in desperate, desperate situations who will do anything for money, anything to survive, and they go on the darkest, most dangerous journey. And it's it's just brilliant, it's moving and incredibly... Shamefully I don't know any of these other films, but this one is brilliant.”

“Oh, this is an interesting film. I remember seeing this in the '80s. My mom, my mom showed me this, Local Hero. It was an interesting time, this and My Beautiful Laundrette were two films I remember seeing at a time in my life when film felt very other, very distant, really about worlds I didn't know about or didn't live in. And this felt very much on my doorstep, it felt like a Britain that I knew, I mean set in Scotland, but a Britain that I knew. And My Beautiful Laundrette was similar in that it felt like a London that I knew. And it really moving, and then this incredible performance at the end by Burt Lancaster who shows up like sort of, you know, a knight in shining armor. That's a wonderful film.”

“Oh, this was a this was a film that introduced me to Bob Hoskins, who I luckily got to work with, Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa. Which again at a very formative time in my life showed a side of London that I sort of saw and felt around me, but hadn't necessarily seen on film. And Bob Hoskins demonstrating his brilliant ability to be incredibly tough, plausibly real of the street, and yet with this incredible heart of gold, which was kind of Bob himself. And Cathy Tyson gives a great performance in that, and there's a there's a great there's a great supporting role by Michael Caine, who no surprise steals every scene he's in. But it's Bob's film.”

“So one more, should we say one of my favorite films. My children always joke that I never have favorites, I always say, "Oh, I like I like all sorts of films and all sorts of music." But this film really has stuck with me since being shown it by my mom when I was, gosh, very, very young, maybe 12 or 13, The Night of the Hunter. It's a fable, it's a terrifying nursery rhyme that literally by the end, halfway through, sort of dips into the fantasy of a child where you get this macro images of lizards and spiders, and the most incredible performance of Robert Mitchum. With this, I remember one image that always sticks to my mind is him going, he's just got out of prison and he goes to see, he goes into a strip joint, puts his hand in his pocket and his flick knife appears through his trousers instead of an erection. It's the most shocking image and kind of sums up the threat that this man has. Anyway, that's a classic, and if you haven't seen it you must.”