Quotes About Directors

Searching out directors you respect and that you can learn from that's always the dream. That's the goal. That's hopefully where this whole thing is leading, and what better way to learn about directing and learn about what works and what I like and what resonates me than by working with a bunch of great directors.

Acting is always more fun for me.I love being a part of a story, I love collaborating, I love working with different directors. If I just directed more and more, it would lessen the opportunity to work with all these big directors that I've had the opportunity to work with.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.

When you work with directors who really love actors, who love their contribution, it feels amazing. But sometimes when you work with directors, you feel like youre in the way.

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.

I think the best directors rarely loose their temper. I think the best directors provide you with a safe environment where they can instill you with confidence and allow you to try things out and not feel like your failing or that you're doing it wrong.

It's a lot to do with the Marvel ecosystem. It's different from the traditional studio system. Because it is, for how absurdly, incredibly successful they are, it is a family. It is a loving family. It is a group of people who only care about making things good. They don't choose directors who don't want to work with them in the way that they work. And the directors that they choose are better for having done it. Every director who comes out of that system are one kind when they come in, another when they come out. And they usually come back for more. They usually make more than one.

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

A lot of TV is put together by teams, by writing staffs and several different directors. It's a great, very smart way to make television. It's worked for however long TV's been around.

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

As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.

Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.

We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.

There are plenty of bad actors and there are plenty of bad directors. There are actors who will always be bad and there are good actors who you cry for because they're being badly directed or the material isn't good enough.

If it gets to the Supreme Court, I'll have the directors of every museum in the country as expert testimony that my work is legitimate art.

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.

The best thing an actor can be is flexible, because all directors are different and all actors are different.

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, "well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct".

The work is the work. The work is not me. I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films. Even though it's my voice, I'm a storyteller.

After I saw a couple of pictures put out by my fellow comedy-directors, which seemed to have abandoned the fun in favor of the message, I wrote Sullivan's Travels to satisfy an urge to tell them that they were getting a little too deep-dish, to leave the preaching to the preachers.

Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere.

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.

You're in a movie, so you have to think about how something plays. It's not like you're thinking about how an audience is going to react. You're trying to present the story. You're trying to illuminate the lives of these people in the story. So I'm thinking about how my behavior as this character best illuminates what's going on with them in this moment in time. I always say it's sort of the director's job. People think that the directors direct actors. No. Really, what the director's doing is directing the audience's eye through the film.

In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.

Maybe I have just a younger voice than many other directors.

[In relationships with a directors] I want to be able to give and take, and I can't name what it is: respect, energy, investment in the task, focus, humor, intelligence, but I always feel responsible for taking the money.

I have many valentines. My mom and my sister and my directors. I got calls from all of them. And my friends. I respect what Valentine's Day stands for because it is about love

I'm not in a position where I get to pick and choose roles. I usually go on auditions in long lines and embarrass myself in front of casting directors, and with a lump in my throat and my ears burning, I walk past reception and smirking actors as I go to the parking garage and go back on the highway.

Women are making strides in many areas and women have mentored and supported me along the way. I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.

What people think improvisation is and non-improvisation is, it's nothing to do with what you like or dislike. It's all about how it happens with certain directors and certain scenes. That's the way it works. It's not something, in general, that you can decide.

My whole family is very artistic - my uncles are all actors and theatre directors.

I'd never really done comedy before Community, so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot.

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.

Certainly as actors, and maybe as directors, you've got to hang on to something childlike. You've got to know what play is. I haven't worked with Mike Leigh, but I know him very well and there's something open in his eyes about what's in front of him. And the same is true of Alfonso in a Mexican, mad way. There's an enthusiastic response to something. Neil Jordan, the same, when he gets excited . You just want to know there's a human being in there.

Having been a child actor, I remember how directors would trick me to get good performances out of me. I don't think you need to do that.

If the United States is to produce a nation of investors-as we must if we are to gain financial world-leadership-it is imperative that boards of directors be so constituted as to adequately represent the interests and inspire the complete confidence of investors of moderate substance.

One of the young production assistants (on 'Terminator: Salvation') stepped over to my chair and said, 'Mr. Ironside, are you any relation to the Ironside who was in 'Top Gun'?' And I said, 'I am, yes.' And she grinned and said, 'I knew it! Talent must run in your family!' And she walked away. And all of the producers and directors kind of looked at me uncertainly, and I said, 'What are you guys so uncomfortable for? That's an incredible compliment. I do look like the father of that guy, for Christ's sake!'

I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to work with good directors and for me it's not really a plan each time I'm on a set with one of them; I think about what I can learn from them because I'm very aware that my filmmaking skills are very modest.

Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.

I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little... We measure our performance in seconds.

Alejandro Amenabar is a different kind of director than I lot of the directors I've asked for. He really asks you to enter his dream as opposed to, you know, a guy like Sidney Lumet or something is going to ask you to create a character almost like a documentary. He wants you to make the people really real and he's going to capture it like a documentarian.

Some directors involve waiting, and if you want to work with that particular director you're going to have to hang around.

I trust work, directors - I don't live in fear. All good experiences have come from trusting the universe. There is no other way to live or love. Otherwise, you create your own prison.

It helps, if you've directed, to be able to write a script that is director-friendly. You're really telling them [directors], "This is how it works on this show." It takes some of the guesswork out of it.

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

If you're creative, they let you be the showrunner, producer. The first thing my partner and I did as producers was hire ourselves as directors - because who else would hire me?

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

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.