Quotes About Directors

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

I understand the formula that producers hire directors and directors are hired to direct and actors are hired to act. I don't have any conflict with any directors because I know they're the boss.

When I first started out, it was very, very difficult to even get in the room with directors or casting directors because they would see that I hadn't been to drama school and wouldn't want to see me. Now, I feel like it's changing. We have this new generation of a lot of writers, directors and actors who are just breaking through, and they're doing it for the passion.

There are times when you work with directors on set, and things are a bit rudderless, and those can be good directors.

There are many directors in the middle range who've made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who've had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn't almost totally enamored of the latter category.

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.

I really do think you lose the audition on the first ten seconds. I think you walk in, the casting directors and the producers and the directors have a real definite feeling of what they're going for, and if you don't look like it, it's pretty much done. Your acting is basically a bonus.

It's hard for new directors to find good tracks because we don't usually get to choose good music by good artists. I honestly think music videos will slowly die out. There will always be a few directors who do cool things. But look how many great videos there were in the '90s, and then look at the 2000s. It's depressing.

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.

I can't imagine any director directing a screenplay of mine, because the great directors all have very personal styles, and the ones that don't are not very interesting directors.

I don't really consider myself a female director, and I don't want to do so for other women. Female directors are just directors.

I feel I should defer to the writers and the directors because theyre the ones who have the complete vision. They see things through from the beginning to the end. Im responsible for one small part, so my scope is much more limited than theirs.

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.

There's another aspect about the Seventies. Blazing Saddles, as wonderful as it was, sort of hurt the Western. It made such fun of them, that you almost couldn't take them seriously from that point on. That's why only Westerns that had the stink of Watergate or Vietnam could be taken seriously. There were so few Westerns made since then, from the Eighties on, that the few directors who did were so pleased with themselves and so happy to have the opportunity that they got lost in visuals, they got lost in the vistas and the pretty scenery.

I'm only wanted by directors for the image I give off, and it makes me angry. I always wanted to be an actor and not a beauty pageant winner.

Directors have to push me. I have to be pushed up. Not all the time, but often.

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've never been difficult to anybody or with anybody on a picture. Especially when you're in that nice status of hierarchy of actors and actresses who get to approve directors. Because once you make that choice, it's my belief that the director's boss.

Some directors are like it's their... nothing can change, nothing can move. I like collaborating, even when an extra has an idea, I like to bring to really have collaboration.

I know that Madonna is not a first-time filmmaker, but I have worked with a lot of first time filmmakers and I have worked with a lot of inexperienced film directors so that never has particularly worried me - I find it quite exciting - but I have never worked with a director who has had so little experience of directing who was so prepared.

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

I fall in love with every film while I'm doing it. I fall in love with the directors, I fall in love with the process. I don't think I could do it otherwise.

I never storyboard. I hate it. I don't understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.

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.

I'm just trying to choose interesting, quirky projects or things with interesting directors or just movies that have a lot of people I like attached to them so I know I'm going to have a good time.

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".

Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.

Sometimes, with directors, you have to take what they say and translate it in your head, into something that makes sense to you, because you're speaking two different languages.

Cable TV has become where the best actors, writers and directors have gone to work because they are allowed to do character-driven stories.

If you look at the types of directors out there, I'm not as weird as most of them.

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

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.

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

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

If you're not filled back up quickly, you might collapse like a birthday balloon". I guess that's why acting is so addictive. For the director, that addiction will come from the love and trust he gets from the "orchestra", him being the conductor. That's why many directors fall in love with their leading lady/man: having someone say "how do you want me to be" is incredible.

I feel very, very grateful. I'm a lucky guy, you need a lot of luck, and then when the cameras roll, you have to have this group of writers, directors, and actors that just gel, and it seems to literally be happening more and more.

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.

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

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.

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.

I do feel, like everyone, there's not enough female directors out there, there's not enough female producers, and would like to see more people get more opportunity, more opportunity for roles for women.

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.

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.

After Star Trek, I was with the top agencies, but producers and directors did not know what to do with me.

I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.

The idea that all violence in movies is okay simply because it happens is bull. Directors and writers have a responsibility.