Quotes About Directors

All directors are control freaks and very obsessive. I get the feeling that directors as kids, they all have had a childhood with not too much contact with other kids. They constructed their own reality and they continue to do it. It's a funny breed, directors.

People are mystified by it and so they kind of think, the acting community thinks they're gonna be replaced by CG characters and animators think they're gonna be replaced by performance capture (and) a lot of directors, particularly European directors, who have no experience of it.

A lot of new American directors have had mentors who have given them advice. And some of them have had the way paved for them by huge Hollywood directors who saw a younger version of themselves.

The thing I love about working with first-time directors is that it's always quite shocking how little difference there is between them and directors who've been directing all their lives.

I like working with directors because I'm really opinionated about what things work and may not work, what audiences like and may not like, (not really) but I do have opinions about things. I like to be able to say them and then have them acted on. The director who responds to me like that, always gets my appreciation. I do appreciate it. What I find is the best directors, no matter what kind of name they have, are like that.

There are a lot of female directors in Lebanon but we can't really talk about a true film industry, it's still very small. But we do have a few female directors.

I've turned down good directors before because I knew the part didn't speak to me and I've worked with less talented directors before because the part I had such passion for.

As you're growing up, it's odd, because directors don't expect you to grow up. They think you'll be young forever, but as an actor, there is an awkward period when you're too young for old or too old for young, and it can be an odd time.

Russian directors, we are shooting the same streets. The same things. Tom Jacobson has a fresh eye and found very interesting and very cool locations and angles and characters.

It would be horrible to be micro-managed! I don't think directors can really micro-manage people. It's just impossible.

I've always been quite mature because of the way my parents brought me up. They were very good at talking to me like a person rather than a baby, and I was around so many actors and directors from such a young age because my dad is an actor. I was more comfortable with adults rather than actually being an adult child.

I'm very fortunate to have the privilege of working with directors like Bill Condon and Paul Thomas Anderson, who I think is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.

You have to remind casting directors out here that you don't just do one thing. There's a lot of people who do just one thing.

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.

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world.

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.

I am impatient with directors who don't know what they want, and the way you don't know what they want is because they want to do one more. "Let's do one more." So, "What for?" I guarantee you there's not going to be a change.

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

I've been very lucky to work with a lot of amazingly supportive directors.

There are some actresses who cannot function on the set without having a close relationship with their directors. Their way of communicating with the director is through intimacy. It doesn't necessarily have to do with any physical act; it has more to do with achieving a closeness that they find very valuable.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

I get along great with directors, but I think some producers would tell you I'm a pain. They may say I'm tough to work with, but I have a great passion for what I do. I believe in fighting for it.

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

I wanted to just surround myself with people who I think are better than I am, whether they're actors or directors or producers, so that I could learn from them.

There's nothing worse than a director that keeps changing their mind. Because, unlike the directors I work with, I'm not decisive at all.

Actually, the few good Chinese movies that foreign countries choose to import are Zhang Yimou's, and mine, a few directors, but how many movies can we make in a year? We can only make a few, while they turn them out continuously.

I always have directors who are somewhat frustrated because they'll reference a beautifully obscure film from the '50s or '60s or '70s, and I've not seen it.

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

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.

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 interest in music tends toward being orchestral music. And the repertoire of music that exists is, to me, far more emotive than what is standardly used in movie scores. That isn't always. I think there've been some excellent movie scores by excellent directors. But for the most part, watching a film, one of today's movies, I think that the emotional undertone of movie scores is pretty poor.

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.

I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide.

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.

As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let's put it this way: It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

I was lucky that I was getting exposed to a lot of different kinds of films, and I was liking them all. So it seemed logical to me that you could - as in the style of the studio directors of the 30s and 40s - jump from one genre to the next, with the same satisfaction.

The lack of women directors is a sad fact of life. Kathryn Bigelows thrilling Best Director win may help turn things around.

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.

I guess I always knew going into the movie that casting that part would be difficult. Oliver just felt likeable. I felt it would be hard to dislike this man. I don't know why, but I'm sure other directors have felt the same when casting him. Oliver is goofy yet formidable, smart but likeable... I didn't want the character of Alex to be nasty or demonised. I wanted him to be struggling with his actions.

Have you noticed how most directors are either bald or grey-haired?

I happen to have worked with male directors who don't understand women at all. Not at all. I'm flabbergasted by their ignorance.

I find it kind of weird that directors want to put themselves in their films.

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.

I want make more records with my sister. I want to go on the road. I want to tour around the world. I want to continue to make great films and work with incredible directors that I respect and look up to.