Drawing on his experience as a theatrical director, 56-year-old Brit John Madden turned Shakespeare in Love into a multiple Oscar winner. Now he has taken David Auburn’s Tony-winning drama Proof and transformed it into a passionate film of the same name with the powerful quartet of Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hope Davis and Jake Gyllenhaal, driving it.

The L Magazine: When did you make the transition from theater to film?

John Madden: I can’t really put a date on it. It was about 1986. I became a director while I was living in this country. I was directing radio plays originally and then became a stage director toward the end of the 70s. I had a good, productive career as a stage director in New York and other places. By that time, we had a family and moved back to the UK. I saw myself in the uncomfortable position of having a professional life in one country and my domestic life in another and couldn’t tolerate that any longer. So, I decided to go back and make movies, which is what I had wanted to do.

The L: Have you always wanted to be a filmmaker?

JM: I dreamed about it. I had grown up with movies and I had been as excited about the medium as everybody was in those days. I basically went back to learn the ropes. I made a film for British television in 1984 and I had a ball doing that.

The L:  Are you surprised about how successful you’ve become?

JM: Yes. I am gratified and surprised. It didn’t happen overnight. I’ve been working for a long time, so I slowly developed a reputation for myself and I make no apologies for that. I think it’s great to know who you are because a lot of this work has to do with experience and maturity.

The L: Do feel like a traditional British director?

JM: The British come from a very literary position because even setting aside the movie, British television represented the British independent film industry, so there was an incredibly high standard of work being done without commercial pressure. There’s the focus on character and the literary sensibility, which is part of what I have grown up knowing — and what I have an affinity for.

The L: Do you feel more comfortable working with the same people like Gwyneth Paltrow?

JM: Yes, you do build up a trust for people you’ve worked with before. But I am still open to working with new people all the time. There’s actually not an enormous number of people I’ve worked with repeatedly. Besides Gwyneth, there’s Judi Dench, David Morissey, and Colin Firth.

The L: When you converted Proof the play into a film, how did you open it up more cinematically?

JM: My way of working on something is to burrow into its center and understand how it’s doing what it’s doing. I place enormous importance on the script. I think it’s important to go as far as you can to solve problems at the script stage. I positively relish the task of re-imagining something in another form. The first play I directed, called Wings, was originally a radio play. I then was asked to do something that only would happen in America: I got the opportunity to re-imagine it as a stage play. Later, I re-imagined it again as a television piece. It had been through every conceivable version.

The L: When you first approached the play, did you have any ambivalence about how to incorporate the mathematics into the play?

JM: The world of mathematics is an off-screen/off-stage presence that throws an analogous light on the human interactions that is occurring around it. On the other hand, it was a world that I was quite pleased and intrigued to investigate. I love all those conundrums. I insured myself with a mathematics advisor that I could rely on. The play and the movie gives you an unexpected glimpse into what that world is actually like — it’s full of emotions like competitiveness, passion, drugs, and outrageous parties that we would never associate with such a dry subject.

The L: Do you find yourself approaching American actors differently than British actors?

JM: Not at all. An intelligent actor responds to intelligent material no matter what their nationality is. I don’t make any distinctions there. I was nationality-blind when I was casting for Proof.