Gillian Armstrong: Magnificent Obsessions

I'm reading all the time, mostly for work, but the best is when I pick up a novel and I'm not thinking about whether this will make a film. I just want to read something that will take me on a journey. I want magic and beauty in the writing. Real life is so odd and so strange, and the writers I like best capture that strangeness in their work. Their writing has such humanity. It's not just trying to be clever or outrageous; the authors are trying to say something about the human condition. And that's what I want—to be moved or affected.

Unfortunately, my work takes away much of the pleasure I get from reading. I always have so many screenplays on my desk, and I have to get through them quickly. There aren't many scripts that I've read over the years and thought, "Well, that's interesting,"—it's got depth and layers and complications. Screenplay writing is seen, sadly, as an easy art. It seems to me that novelists put so much more time into their work, so it doesn't surprise me to find that when I do come across stories that move me, they almost always have been adapted from books.

Gillian Armstrong's new film, Charlotte Gray, is in theaters this January.