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This great Hollywood director was born in England and directed five productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company before making his first movie, Shallow Grave, which was the biggest box office hit in the UK that year.

He followed that up with an even bigger success, the cult classic Train Spotting, starring Ewan McGregor.

He would then invite Leonardo DiCaprio to a Thailand paradise that wasn't in the beach.

Always ready for challenges, he would direct 127 hours with one sole actor, James Franco, who was nominated for an Academy Award.

Later he created an intense biopic of Steve Jobs with an impressive cast.

But he might always be best remembered for the incredible and touching story of a kid from Mumbai that got him nine Academy Awards.

Slumdog millionaire.

Hello I'm Danny Boyle and you're watching Hollywood's Best Film Directors.

We're in this hotel in London, just near the embankment, and we filmed our last movie just outside actually, in the opposite hotel, the one opposite here.

We normally work in London.

I mean, occasionally we work, say, in India or... But we normally work in London.

I come from a place called Manchester which is in the northwest of, it's about 200 miles from London and it's in the northwest of England.

My origins are Irish but I'm born and bred in Manchester, just in a small town outside Manchester.

My parents were, my mother was a very devout Catholic and brought me up, tried to bring me up to be one as well.

Not quite so successful, she was pretty remarkable in all, in everything else she aimed for.

And my father was a labourer, a kind of working class guy, and I come from a working, very proud, I come from a very decent working class family.

So at school I did, I kind of organised performances in the, like, assemblies, school assemblies, you know, where all the school would meet.

And that is directing, in fact, I didn't really know what it was called at the time, but I was the guy who was organising everybody and telling everybody what to do.

And so I had an English teacher who was fundamental, and he said, "You should do drama."

So I did, and I went to a place, a college in North Wales, Bangor in North Wales, and I had a wonderful time there doing drama, learning.

I mean, I did English and drama, but I didn't do very much English.

We just did plays all the time, and I would perform in some, which I enjoyed, but I'm a very loud actor.

But then I discovered what I knew then to be directing, which is literally conceiving the way that you will present the play and informing everyone to follow that conception, which is directing, really.

And... action!

And I fell in love with it there.

So when I left there, I tried to... I mean, I loved film, but I... And I wrote to a number of people, seeing if I could get some work with them.

But you don't.

Nobody replies, you know.

And... And so I wrote away to theatres.

And I'd seen a theatre company working in... near where I was at college.

A company called Joint Stop Theatre Company.

I joined them, and they were a collective.

Everybody's paid the same.

So I was a young man being paid as much as everyone else.

It was extraordinary.

Working with the highest caliber of people, particularly two directors, two theatre directors, Max Stafford-Clark and Bill Gaskell, who are two geniuses.

I eventually became a freelancer, which is, I was trying to get into films.

Eventually, I moved to Northern Ireland, to the BBC in Northern Ireland, to try and use... to learn how to use a camera.

And when I came back from there, I was freelance, really, and I would do odd bits of theatre, and I worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

I've been very lucky, I've worked at the three major theatre venues in Britain.

They're all called the National Theatre and they're all Shakespeare companies.

My heart will leave you then soon Come here, you little bitty... Done it.

Finished that first day.

I can't really remember the first day, the exact first day, but I remember the first week of filming Shallow Grave, because it was a momentous week, and it actually illustrates something that was quite pivotal, really, in my career and the way that we've worked, the people I work with.

We got this film, Channel 4, gave us a million pounds, which was... it's not a lot of money to make a film, but it's a huge amount of money at the same time.

and we had six weeks to shoot this script, the Shallow Grove script, which this guy John Hodge had written.

and we went in as equal partners, making the film me, the producer and the writer.

and Channel 4, to protect their investment, appointed a... he was a kind of production manager come first assistant director.

they appointed this guy who was clearly from another world.

We've got about 125 extras today.

So what I want to try and do is feed them in first.

So we, after a couple of days shooting, everything was going okay.

And then there was this shot, which is the final shot of the movie, which is a shot of Chris Eccleston when he's dead and he's in a morgue.

And you see him close up and the camera's turned.

And you've seen it at the beginning of the film and you think he's alive.

In fact, he's dead.

And the camera pivots and turns and moves round and ends up in a wide shot of the morgue.

It's all in one and the guy shuts the door and it's very difficult.

It's a very difficult shot to do in one.

And we shot all morning and we still haven't got it.

It's one shot.

And this guy rang up Channel 4 basically to say, "These guys are out of order and you should sack this director and get rid of them."

And so I spoke to the guys at Channel 4 and the guy who runs Channel 4 at that time was a guy called David Orkin and he says, "This guy says I should fire you.

Why shouldn't I fire you?"

And I said, "Because this is the most important shot in the film."

I said, "This is the final shot of the film."

I said, "There's a saying that editors have, that there are only two things matter in a film, the beginning and the end, and the beginning not so much."

And the Channel 4 guy said, "Listen, you can fire him, but, you know, I'm not giving you any more money, and you've got to deliver the film, otherwise, you know, whatever."

So, and we did, we did deliver the film, and it was a big success.

That was a kind of, we work in our own way, and we obey our own rules.

We're very honourable and very sensible about money.

We don't misbehave, but we obey our own rules.

We do not do what other people tell us to do.

That's, that was fundamental, yeah.

(Dogs barking) And in board.

(Music) Action.

(Music) Action.

Got it.

The story of Sandok Malina, again it involves Channel 4, which was now run by, film 4 was now run by a different person, it was run by a wonderful woman called Tessa Ross.

And she'd commissioned Simon Balfoy, who had written the full Monty, to adapt this book about Mumbai.

And it's a book by a diplomat, actually.

The book is, and it's very different to the film, but it's the central genesis of it, is a kid goes on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

and answers all the questions correctly.

How's that?

And that's the story.

So, Sly Simon, who'd been in India when he was 18, loved it and had written this wonderful script.

And it was sent to me by Christian Coulson, the producer.

And I read it and I cried within... I was like... I cried and I... I remember after ten minutes of reading it, I thought, "I'm going to do this film."

That is him!

That's his helicopter landing!

His landing!

Get out that door!

Trainspotting, yes, well we've done Shallow Grave, and we've done quite well with Shallow Grave.

And so there were a number of people who were quite keen to get us to do something else, and we got lots of offers and stuff like that, and I was not really interested in any of them, because we found this book, which was a very small book at the time, a bio of In Welsh called Trainspotting.

It was only published in Scotland, there was only a few copies of it around.

We all read it and were just like astonished by it.

It's a Joyce-ian book, it's like Ulysses or something, it's infinite.

There are a number of different films that could be made from it, and still could be.

And we said we wanted to do that.

And everybody said, "You're crazy, nobody goes to see drug movies, they're the biggest turn-off in the world."

And we said, "Well, it's not really a drug movie, there are a lot of drugs in it, but it's a movie really about friendship, really."

And so Channel 4 gave us some money.

They actually gave us double, they gave us two million.

We now had two million instead of one to make the movie, which is great.

So we had seven weeks to shoot and we got this amazing bunch of actors.

And action.

Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Jobs.

Yeah!

So we had been working in our team on a project about David Bowie.

Amazing script.

A kind of musical about David Bowie.

And we'd done a lot of work on it and we had just learned that we weren't going to be able to make the movie because we couldn't get the music.

So we were in grief, we were grieving for the end of that project.

And this script arrived by Aaron Sorkin because David Fincher, who was directing it, he directed Social Network, had dropped out.

I don't know what had happened amongst them.

I'm a big fan of Fincher.

And I read it and I mean it's an extraordinary piece of work.

It's both incredibly intimidating because it's 185 pages of dialogue.

Nothing else.

No indication of how you should make it.

It's just three scenes, six characters, 185 pages of dialogue.

No instructions, no words, nothing.

And it was very exciting and it was the unknown.

I'd never done anything like this before.

And action!

He's a flawed, a very, very flawed hero, if you like.

I don't even know whether hero's the right word to use about him.

So, it was irresistible.

You're doing both.

You're moving me off the Mac and phasing it out.

Yes.

I love pre-production because you're trying to both make real your vision and you're trying to enhance it and develop it as other people, as everybody joins the production.

As all the different elements come together, your cinematographer, costume designer, all the different people join the cast, everybody, you're constantly explaining your vision of the film and of course as you're doing that it's not just a static thing, it's developing as you explain it and as these people join and as they add things to it you know.

So I love that part of the process and especially when it's when you're developing it in a specific town.

So for instance in Trainspotting we were developing it in Edinburgh and Glasgow in these two great cities although it was meant to be set in Edinburgh we were developing it in both cities if you like and in Some Doug Millionaire the identity of the city we were based in and doing all our work in Mumbai was fundamental to it and in this film the Steve Jobs film it was San Francisco now it's very difficult to shoot in San Francisco not because of the town itself but because of the lure of other cities and their tax breaks which are encouraging studios to make films not where the film is set but to find clever ways of avoiding doing that and actually making it where it's a few million dollars cheaper because of tax breaks and we absolutely resisted that on the Steve Jobs movie because it felt to me that San Francisco is the Bethlehem really of the second industrial age of the second machine age, this digital age we're now in and it's come out of this town I mean so you've got what you've got to respect that and if you do respect it and make your film there you will get benefits from it and they're both tangible and intangible and the tangible ones are thousands of people turned up for our crowd days with no money to pay them but they turned up anyway because this was their story and they wanted to be in it and the intangible ones are the actors the crew everybody begins to feel that you're in a place that has a significance really and that affects how you work you know You're not in a fake place like if you were doing it in Hungary Which we were encouraged to do because this theater's in Hungary you're in you're inside a theater Well, I mean what difference does it make so say the accountant But it does make a difference that you're in the real space wanted to do you were riding at that spot We found this novel the beach by Alex Garland which again a bit like train spotting at the time was a very small novel it was a very cult novel around London actually not many people had read it and we we thought wow that's a wonderful idea for a film so we went off to Thailand to make it we had a great time making it he's a wonderful actor and there were a wonderful bunch of people so all these people they abandoned the West and went to live in this paradise society which they forged in Thailand but really just amongst Westerners they had no real interest in the rest of the world didn't interested in Thai customs or Thai history or the Thai people and there is this incredible kind of sense of **** we are doing exactly the same as filmmakers we've turned up here we brought we took an enormous crew 200 people you know because we had all this money because Leo was involved and you arrive and it's like David Lean arriving in the old days arriving in a foreign country right and it's colonial it's like right we're gonna make this country behave exactly like we want it to behave for our movie I found that very I didn't I couldn't I couldn't find any real inspiration and what we were doing and I learnt from it and when we went to make Slumdog in India which was our next trip if you like I didn't take anybody we took like eight people we made the film inside India with Indian crew and we obeyed India rather than just imposed ourselves and that was a fundamental lesson for me that I learned the difference between the beach and Slumdog Millionaire for instance.

Well, Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire was cast... He was the only guy who was not from India.

He's British, he's from London.

He's from Harrow.

And in fact, my daughter, she'd been watching this very, very rude program, which I wasn't allowed to watch with her, called Skins, which is a very sexy program about teenagers.

And he was in it.

Outrageous stuff goes on in it.

I was like, "Whoa," when I watched it, you know?

You realize how old you are.

And she said, "Oh, you should see him.

He's very good."

So we did.

And he was wonderful.

So we brought Deb from London.

Everybody else we cast there.

And the kids, again, we've been looking at kind of casting kids from... who spoke English.

But they tended to be very middle-class kids.

And they also tended to be McDonald's kids.

Because fast food had made an impact on India.

And so the kids were slightly chubby.

We were in the slums looking for locations.

And I looked at the kids and the kids were skinny as any, you know, they're just street kids.

And they hadn't been exposed to this new diet.

And I said to the casting director in India, Lavleen, I said, "We've got to get these kids."

And she said, "Well, you can have them and they are brilliant," she said, "but they only speak Hindi."

We said, "OK, we're gonna do the first part of the film in Hindi then."

And it's like that, whoa, to the backers, they're like, "What?

He's gonna do it in Hindi?

They think you're insane."

So that's the shape of the, you know, that's how the film is shaped by the casting and by some kind of integrity in the casting, that you try and find the right kids rather than do a kind of fake version of it, you know.

And cut.

And take.

Very good start, very good everyone.

And action!

I had a wonderful time with you and I... We started... I met him on Cello Grave and he was a very handsome leading man in British television at the time.

He had this beautiful mane of hair and he was a pretty gorgeous guy.

And then it transformed because when he heard what we were going to do next, Trainspotting, he said "I want that."

And we went "We're not sure you're right for it, you know."

He said "Give me a couple of weeks."

So then he turned up, this is the honest truth, he turned up and he'd shaved his head.

Gone.

This hair that his agent loved, because we talked to his agent at one point about cutting his hair.

He said "No way is he going to cut his hair.

No way."

Because he makes his money out of it.

Because he looked like a romantic hero.

And you can do period stuff and all that kind of stuff.

And so he shaved his hair and he'd lost weight.

I mean he's just like skinned down.

I mean that image you see of him in the movie is Ewan's image.

[Music] Action!

[Music] Action.

Cut.

[Music] I want you to walk up there and join him on top of the hill.

Try it more stationary.

It may feel violent enough without too much movement.

Alex!

Hammer time!

And cut.

I like actors very much and I like working with them and a lot of them don't need very much help at all.

They just need the environment in which they're working, you know, and I try and create a very positive environment, supportive environment for them.

Just do it again and stay in frame, just, you know, stay dirty on camera, right?

I do not like people... I like people respecting the actors, that's what we're there for.

The truth of cinema is that however much we imagine that people go to the cinema for certain directors, the truth is 98.9% of the audience go to watch actors, and that's what we're there for, is to record them.

So I expect people, the crew, everyone, to respect that as well and to behave like that.

And so I always start the day, we try and do some rehearsal beforehand, you know, like on our own, just in a rehearsal space.

And then once we come to the set, I try and have the first part of the day, the first hour, or half an hour, or however long it is, depending on the size of scene.

I clear everybody out and it's just me and the actors.

Sometimes the cameraman as well, sometimes the first AD.

But usually it's just the actors, 'cause I want the day to be defined by the actors.

If he looks up... - And starts creeping?

- He just creeps.

And then once he's done, I shout him.

I shout him, I shout him, I shout him.

Yeah?

Megan!

Can't remember the other one!

(laughing) James Rangel, yes!

Um, not the most obvious casting for this wild outdoors man Aaron Ralston who gets trapped in this canyon but my, he's a fine actor and I think a very very underrated actor But you want to see my face Yeah but I want to see So twist, twist round, not to the sky Twist round like... That way?

Yeah, just so, yeah, keep on More?

Yeah More like that?

What he goes through is so repugnant, so awful, you had to be drawn to him.

And he had that quality, and it's not a kind of... He just pulls you in in a funny kind of way.

He's got an ease about him that was beautiful.

So, yeah, that was very difficult for him, because there was nobody else.

It was just him.

And all he did, he'd be just shooting, he'd just read every gap, because there was no words to learn, and he'd be hanging by a harness somewhere, reading a book like this, and then he'd put the book down and start acting.

They love doing that, good actors, they love going, they just drop from one world into another, and they're just straight in it.

They don't want a kind of like big, you would imagine they'd want a big build up, like a big preparation and all that kind of stuff.

They don't, and fast benders like that as well.

He just wants to be chatting like this and then go.

He doesn't even want anybody to say action because it's like, well, no, she's doing it and they fold into the world.

And it's kind of like the ease of not feeling like they're on performance.

They're just inhabiting something that they love doing.

And Franco's like that as well.

Megan!

Christine!

Megan, I'm in here!

Christine!

Christine!

Brilliant!

And cut!

It was an extraordinary, I mean it was a bit like the film itself, it was a bit like a fairy tale really.

The film is a fairy tale in many ways and the reaction and its journey, you know, because we were basically discarded by a studio and picked up by another studio, I mean it was like a rags to riches, bags to rags, bags to riches again, it was just like, it was baffling really, an extraordinary ride and it was wonderful that people, I think it was wonderful the way people responded to it.

What's lovely about it is that it's a real, when you watch it with an audience, it's a wonderful cinema film, you know, because you get an, and you could feel that when, because we used to go around these screenings and you could see that there was this spirit built in the audience, you know, to see what is a simple tale in many ways, but it is a, it's wonderful to see India and to see it in some of the, because it's a very tough film, like fairy tales often are, and people forgot this, at the beginning, there's some horrible things happen, as fairy tales are often made, and they're often based in a viciousness and a horror, and then something chrysalis emerges from that, that, you know, bewitches you and you fall in love with, and so yeah, and it was wonderful that the, it was wonderful that the prizes, if you like, or the awards were so distributed amongst so many people, I think that was a real acknowledgement of how many people contributed to it.

Too slow at the beginning, not enough time at the end, you know, the usual sense, you never learn.

It was good, though.

Yeah, it was good.

My favourite film is Apocalypse Now.

I mean, I always say it never changes.

Other films change, you know, your favourite films, they kind of come and go, different ones come into focus and not.

But I mean, my favourite one is Apocalypse Now.

It's not a perfect film in many ways.

In fact, it's wonderful because it isn't perfect, I think.

But it is the most extraordinary use of cinema to take you to a place that is both real and mythical at the same time.

But it's also a journey, it's the movement of film.

And like Buster Keaton, the General, it's about momentum and movement.

And every time it's a journey, and every time it stops, there's this phenomenal scene or crisis or... And I love that movie.

Martin... No, you can't.

You can't do that.

It's like... There are ones that people like and they're great and they're kind of like... Sometimes, some of them like train spotting.

People know more about it than I know about it.

You talk to people on the street and they're like... So you kind of feel... They don't feel like yours anymore.

So other people take ownership of them like Slumdog and things like that.

The other ones that people don't like so much, you tend to be a bit protective of them or to speak up for them.

So I always say that there is a saying that when you have a huge hit, there's always one territory in the world where it doesn't work, where it's not a hit.

And that's because when you have a flop, which is a film that nobody likes, there's always one territory in the world where it's a huge hit.

It's one of the kind of weird laws of balance.

And so A Lifeless Ordinary, which was a film we made, which is a huge flop, it was number one in Belgium for three weeks.

So there you go.

I always say to young directors that, you know, you've got to trust your actors, because, especially when you're a young director and you probably don't have much money or time, they'll get you out of a corner.

They always get you out of a corner in the end.

And the number of times I've been got out of a corner, you've run out of money, you haven't shot the pages you meant to shoot that day, you know, you've lost, losing the location, you've got 40 minutes left and there's this scene to do.

If you share that with an actor, they'll just do it for you.

'Cause that's their job, they know that, you know, they tell the story, they're the storytellers in a way.

I mean, you are as a film director, but it's through their eyes that the audience experiences the story.

And cut.

[music]