Mike Flanagan worries about suffering burnout when he is working on a movie.
The 44-year-old filmmaker is known for being at the helm of a slew of horror movies and television series since 2000 but admitted that even though he has eliminated alcohol and smoking from his life, he cannot give up work.
He said: "The answer is yes to both. I do worry about burnout. This year, I hit the ceiling of what I can handle. That happened this year. It is incredibly cathartic to work. I’ve eliminated a lot of addictions from my life, at this point, between booze and cigarettes, which is the one I really miss, but I cannot eliminate work. I’m such a workaholic. That’s the one vice that has survived unscathed and is now running amuck in the absence of any others."
The 'Doctor Sleep' director went on to insist that he is "very lucky" to be able to work in the current climate and has "always felt" that his career can go at any time.
He told Collider: "First of all, I’m very lucky to be able to work, especially at a time when the world is in such shit shape, and people’s jobs and stability are constantly under threat.
"There’s a sense I’ve always had that I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to work and that I’d better hold on to it with everything I have because it can go away at any moment. That, for many years, kept it so that the projects overlapped. There’s also this fear that if you really shit the bed with a project and people see it, you don’t get another project. So, I like to have the next project already shooting before one comes out, so that if that one sucks, everybody won’t be able to stop me from making the one that’s already in prep."
