My mother Vivian Ayers always instilled within her children that our opinions, our thoughts and our ideas about what was possible was important. My mother made me feel that I was important as a thinker at four-years-old. And I instill that within my students everyday.

I use something that is a real staple in the directing world. It's called a dance floor. You lay it down so that it's so smooth you can roll around, and you can put furniture on top of it. It's seamless and you don't see it.

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be... I want this look.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

If you just change one person's life, you feel like you've done something. But if you can change a whole lot of them and get them looking at themselves differently, it's amazing.

I've had a lot of experience auditioning people, and I can do it rather quickly even though sometimes I let them linger and give them time, but I kind of know after I see them do a couple of steps. I know.