I chose 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' specifically 'cause I had just made 'The Bourne Identity' and made a film that glamorized being an action hero, and I wanted to make the exact opposite. I wanted to make a movie that glamorized maintaining a marriage, and that made the action hero part seem easy and made the marriage part seem hard.

Doug Liman

The one thing about reality is sometimes it gives you material that is wilder than some of your wildest imagination could come up with.

Doug Liman

Almost anything can be justified as a style of filmmaking if it works.

Doug Liman

I'm really attracted to anti-heroes, and I'm a little bit of a troublemaker myself, and a little bit of a rule-breaker, and I like spies.

Doug Liman

A part of me is a liberal New Yorker involved in politics and certain attitudes about movies. I kind of lost my indie credibility over 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith.' I know I haven't lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me.

Doug Liman

I had just come off doing a lot of commercials when I did 'Go,' so a part of the fast pace and efficiency comes from the discipline I had to learn from telling stories in 25-second increments, and that type of discipline is insane.

Doug Liman

I've often found, as I did with 'Bourne,' where I was inspired by the events of Iran-Contra when I designed the CIA for the 'Bourne' franchise, that the reality of how things work is usually more compelling than the superficial, made-up version that Hollywood sometimes does.

Doug Liman

My films are very rooted in specific people's point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters.

Doug Liman

'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' - every scene is from those characters' point of view. They're in literally every scene, very unusual in a big studio film.

Doug Liman

The reality is, the movies that were most impactful to me growing up, when I decided I wanted to make movies, I was going to see Woody Allen double features with my brother, back when they had double features.

Doug Liman

It's kind of hard to work with Tom Cruise and not be aware that you're working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

Doug Liman

I feel like, Barry Seal, he's pure of heart.

Doug Liman

When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.

Doug Liman

I think making a great action movie is one of the hardest cinematic endeavors. By definition, smart characters avoid action. Smart people don't go down dark alleys, but if you're making an action movie and you want to have an action sequence, somehow you have to get that character into that dangerous situation.

Doug Liman

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena, in 'The Wall,' are superheroes. They're very grounded, but the amount of training and stuff that soldiers bring to the field, they're like Iron Man.

Doug Liman

You gotta understand, 'Swingers' was a resume film for me. I never thought anybody would see the movie who I wasn't in the room with showing it to them.

Doug Liman

I don't necessarily think that having more money helps make you make a better film. Sometimes having less money is better. You're forced into being more original; you're forced into hearing something versus seeing it.

Doug Liman

I subscribe to the school that there are no dumb questions.

Doug Liman

There's a weird intellectual approach to filmmaking, where I pose a question to myself and use the film to try and answer it.

Doug Liman

If you go to a restaurant with Tom Cruise, it's like walking in with Santa Claus. Everybody is in a better mood because he's there.

Doug Liman

I'm not really in a rush to grow up.

Doug Liman