Quotes About Directors

I love being on sets with very seasoned directors as well as very new directors. Every time is a discovery process. You learn something new every time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I like meeting directors. It can be helpful because sometimes when you meet filmmakers you find out if you like them and if they like you, and that is important in terms of considering a role. Choosing a role is all about whether I relate to the role and the story really. That's the criteria.

Personally, I can't stand violence. In any standard American mainstream movie, there's 20 times more violence than in any one of my films, so I don't know why those directors aren't asked why they're such specialists for violence.

I've worked with a lot of great directors and often times they solicit your ideas.

Sometimes, directors are afraid to stop shooting, because the second you stop and say, "We got it," and move on, you'll never get another chance. And they're terrified to get in the cutting room and not be happy. So they just keep shooting.

With Kubrick and most film directors, they are in complete control, but one can influence them.

Personally Im very happy to be behind the scenes. I like collaboration, I like working with directors.

I've got a lot of wonderfully talented, creative directors I've worked with in Texas, but the market we're in, they kind of have to write to that. I think we've done some cool, simple spots. I was very comfortable in Texas, and getting ready to push out into national stuff, try to get to that national-type creative, and then I got sidetracked with this stuff.

You don't pick black actors or black directors because they are black. You pick them because they are good. If you lend somebody 50 million dollars you want you're money back. You don't care if they are oppressed. You just want you're money back.

I believe that the confidence, really being okay with myself, and really being okay with my gift have grown over the years. It just came with time, and it came with getting my feelings hurt, a few times, and realizing to stop performing for people but if perform for God, who gave you the talent, then you can care less about what any casting directors, producers, or what any of them think. You're doing it for a higher purpose. If they don't like it, that's okay! God does.

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.

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.

There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?

My big break was becoming the spokesperson for Texas Instruments. Casting directors really started giving me a chance to read for projects.

Id love to see more women working as directors and producers.

Every day is still exciting. I have like a very good system worked out with my editor. Some directors are in there every day, sitting there in the room with the editor. I lose perspective incredibly quickly, and so what I do is I watch...I come in the room and give very specific notes and then I go back to my house or in my office and I watch the dailies.

A lot of directors idealize their leading ladies or turn them into these objects of sexuality and beauty.

I have always firmly believed that every director should be judged solely by their work, and not by their work based on their gender. Hollywood is supposedly a community of forward thinking and progressive people yet this horrific situation for women directors persists. Gender discrimination stigmatizes our entire industry. Change is essential. Gender neutral hiring is essential.

I've been really lucky to work with some really great film people in the past, but television works on a much quicker schedule, and it's the TV directors I've worked with that I looked to and became a big fan of.

I'm on the board of directors for Peace Now, which works tirelessly between the Palestinians and the Israelis to create peace in the Middle East and we've never been closer.

All directors should have to act and all actors should have to direct, so that they can understand all these key things that come into play with whether you can meet your day.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

I've worked with Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro and Tom Hanks. I've worked with some really good directors: Woody Allen, Paul Schrader... My God, I've really worked with a lot of people. But I'm intimidated by them, and I'm always thinking, "Oh, my God, he's not going to like me, and I'm going to get fired."

In France, I am so free. I have more freedom than most American directors could dare to even imagine.

After you do a showcase for agency managers and casting directors and you get this folder and some people had a folder that was thick and some people had a folder that was thin. And there's no fairness to it because it's not a fair business.

I feel like some of the best talent is on TV right now, with the writing, acting and great directors.

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.

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 can count on one hand the directors who actually directed me.

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.

The job is exactly the same, it just goes on for longer on TV. Most feature films are 35-40 shooting days. This has 10 parts, with different directors for each block. We shoot with two, sometimes three cameras.

Now, I have big-money offers on three movies, and I have director approval. That's kind of scary,' he says. 'No directors have been attached. That's a lot of pressure on me

Now Tarantino is making DJANGO UNCHAINED. Everybody is telling me I am in the movie but I've not been asked by Tarantino officially. Not yet. There were many, many other Django films following mine, with other actors and directors, but there is only one Django.

Directors are the captains of the ship, and it's your job as the lead actor to make sure that the rest of the cast understand that by doing whatever he says.

I have worked with some very great directors.

Those first memories of my modeling career are not my favorite. At the beginning, it was tough. I was very lucky, my career took off very quickly, but still. All the memories I have about first casting in general - they're not nice. Just because there's so many girls, so much competition. I don't blame those casting directors, they see so many girls and they can't be nice to everybody. But you don't feel like a person, you feel like a number.

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

You hear stories about directors using manipulation to get actors to do certain things, but I think when you're working with professional actors, it's all about trust. They can do anything you want, it's just a matter of them understanding what you're looking for, and the reason why.

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.

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.

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.

I really enjoy the process of making movies. The only thing that really concerns me is working with great directors and actors, and that is fun and exciting.

Control is the wrong word. The practice is very much about sharing, and, in any creative practice, some individuals, whether partners or directors, are much closer to certain projects than I could ever be.

Directors, like actors, get typecast.