Quotes About Directors

Of course, even if the directors like my ideas or the designs I do, they may end up changing the story so much, that those characters have to change, or get cut out altogether, and that's just the way it is. Sometimes the directors are designers themselves, or they want to work with a character designer who will do things in their own distinct way - sometimes the most important thing I do is figure out what they don't want to do, by experimenting. Either way, whether they use my ideas or not, I get paid, so it's all good.

As actors, we have the opportunity to work with many directors. Directors only work with themselves and other actors. They never know what it is like to work with another director. So that relationship that one has with a director is entirely always the king.

Favourite directors change, like favorite authors. I had a passion for Gide and Stein and Faulkner. But now they're no use to me anymore. I've assimilated them - so, enough, they are a closed chapter. This also applies to film directors.

Well, 45-odd years of doing it, so we all pile up the things we like about directors and the things we don't like about directors. And sometimes they're very similar.

I like bold directors. I like directors that go against the norm in a way.

It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.

During 'Chicago Hope,' I never let directors talk to me, because I was so spoiled. I started off with people like Milos Forman, Sidney Lumet, James Lapine, unbelievably gifted people. So there I was saying, 'Don't talk to me, I don't want your opinion.' I behaved abominably.

We all like indie directors - heck, I even married one... but we're divorced now.

A great director, first, is highly intelligent. And he is also a dedicated and willing to work hard. Now those are easy things to identify. The third is the creativity, and that is very difficult to identify in advance. This is why so many of the directors who have started with me were my assistant - the first one was Francis Ford Coppola.

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.

I guess the story that best defines us [with Bud Yorkin] and our relationship goes back to the [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis show. The four stage managers on that show became major TV creators and directors - John Rich, Jack Smight, Arthur Penn and Bud Yorkin.

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.

I've worked with a lot of directors, some of them you wouldn't really attach the word 'artist' to their name.

I mean, I'm willing to do anything with Chris Chulack - he's one of my favorite directors I've ever worked with, and I just think he's a fantastic man, and a great creator, and a good friend.

I have always been a great fan of Peter Chan and many other great directors who specialize in anything outside of action.

Yeah, the actors really come in as lumps of clay. We're ready to work with the directors and find our way. These guys really come in having done their work.

Usually directors hire me because I'm what they are looking for. But once in a while, and it's very rare, they will hire me and then try to make me over.

Most actors go, I read the script and fell in love with it; I fall in love with the directors.

I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff. So, getting to work with those kinds of directors and getting to tell those stories is what I want to do.

I think part of the fun of being an actor is getting to work with different directors and seeing their take on it, what they're passionate about. They all have different ideas about your character.

There are certain directors where you know you're going to be good or you're not going to be there. There are people where you kind of know that if you miss the mark then it'll probably not be in the movie and that's very reassuring.

There are all kinds of directors I want to work with and all kinds of films that I want to do.

On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.

Wong Kar-wai and Ang Lee are two Asian directors I'm really fond of.

In some ways, it's easier to go from short form to long form than vice versa. I used to make 30 second 'movies,' and I think if I only did long form I would find it difficult to adjust to that short a length. 'I gotta say something in 30 seconds. Forget about it!' There have been directors who have done commercials over the years, but they seem to be the exception.

There's a paraphrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.

The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine.

Movies always fascinated me. They are an endless source of inspiration. There are countless images by great directors that made a profound impression on me, and I see film as a sublime example of teamwork.

Children of Men is a solemn, haunting picture, but it's also a thrilling one, partly because of the sheer bravado with which it's made. It left me feeling more fortified than drained. [Director Alfonso] Cuarón, the most openhearted of directors, prefers to give rather than take away.

It's not that I don't want to, it's just that there's no money in it. By that I mean the way the video business works now, the artist and the record label send out a song to a bunch of different directors and say, 'What would you do with this?' Then everyone has to come up with an idea and bid on it. For me, it's like, 'Hey, you want me to do it? Then pay me. I'm not auditioning for you.'

At almost forty years old, I assumed my career on camera was over. And I was certainly given that message by all the TV managers and news directors who passed on me when I was trying to get a job back in the business.

Obviously, I've been very lucky in general in my career, but I feel that I've been very lucky in terms of having directors come along at the right times who have taken me to the next level of where I needed to be.

Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.

As an artist, program directors always want to put you in a little box.

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head.

I've been able to work with great directors in Israel.

What's interesting is that producers, directors and writers tend to typecast me in terms of whatever movie they've seen me in most recently.

In my experience, the best directors I've worked with hired people for a purpose. They hire them with trust. There's not many notes. There's confidence and support.

If you work in casting, it's sort of not cool to want to act. A lot of people think that casting directors are frustrated actors, but it wasn't true with any of the casting people I knew.

It's strange - some directors are really talented but they can be so precious when it comes to letting you be a part of it.

The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful. And that was the real disappointment of the time. You'd see great writer-directors in the '90s becoming part of a system where financiers and movie stars could change the material. I came along just before all that happened.

You can't rely on the approval of others. I used to always look for praise from my directors to reassure myself that I was doing a good job. I don't do that anymore.

I was very obsessed with Ruth Gordon. I really didn't foresee me having any type of career as a leading lady at all because it was just blonds. I just wasn't the type - I was told that by casting directors. I auditioned for Running on Empty [1988] and The Mosquito Coast [1986], and Martha Plimpton was just killing me.

I prefer to work with first-time directors.

Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.

I think a persons life is supposed to be like a DVD. You can see the version everyone else sees, or you can choose the directors cut-the way he wanted you to see it, before everything else got in the way. There are menus, probably, so that you can start at the good spots and not have to relive the bad ones. You can measure your life by the number of scenes you’ve survived, or the minutes you’ve been stuck there. Probably, though, life is more like one of those dumb video surveillance tapes. Grainy, no matter how hard you stare at it. And looped: the same thing, over and over.

I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.