Quotes About Directors

In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

My biggest advice for women writer/directors is to always be attempting to make work that avoids pandering to the conceptions that the industry has put in place for "women directors."

The director's who want to be innovative use the DVD as a tool to see what people have done in the past and you have other people who will actually take from better directors and that makes them better directors.

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.

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.

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

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.

My first professional audition - god, I've never told anybody about this - was for a test commercial, I think it was for Xbox. It involved me getting kidnapped by a granny who wanted to play the Xbox. It was very weird and I definitely had no idea what I was doing. I actually got the gig. It wasn't a commercial; it was what directors did when they wanted to show the company what they would do with a commercial.

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

I was working with actors who were very easy to work with, but I can just imagine how, with all the other decision-making problems that come up along the way, in addition to that, the whole point of what your doing is following performance and character development. You're building your story with those building blocks, and it is not easy. I've only come out with more respect for directors, from this.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

A lot of these people, these program directors, just like anybody else in the world, even though they're supposed to be leaders in the world, they're followers. They follow what they think someone else is doing, instead of trying to blaze a trail.

I've definitely gotten to work with female directors, and I feel lucky because of that. I just feel like more voices should be represented.

Directors have a tendency to use their hands like orchestra conductors. They don't realize that the actor is looking at their faces, anyway.

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.

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

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

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.

It's always fun to get to do independent film because I believe that that's the life blood of film. It's about writers and directors who truly have their own vision, and that's hard.

I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is.

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.

There are lots of good directors I would like to work with; I want to be inspired and challenged by them.

I'm not imprisoned in any one medium. In films I use techniques that are not necessarily what other directors attempt. When I write novels I also use techniques which can run counter to those that a novelist would use.

I just want to play interesting characters, and I want to work with the best directors I can work with.

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

The beautiful thing about it is that no two directors or actors work the same way. You also learn not to be afraid of discussion and conflict.

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.

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.'

I have worked with some very great directors.

When you first get out of doing a show for a long time where you played a teenager, casting directors and producers all still look at you as being the character that you played for so long.

One of the things about Derek Jarman was that he was a painter who worked alone when he painted, but I firmly believe that one of the reasons he made films was for the company. He made filmmakers of all of us, that's the truth. I don't mean he necessarily made directors, but he made us filmmakers. Because we lived in a state of mutual responsibility for what we made.

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.

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.

Very broadly speaking, you can put directors into two areas: One for whom you work, and the other with whom you work. And I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons.

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

Ambiguity in directors is a hard thing to deal with.

I always wanted to create a site that was sports and pop culture. 30 for 30 had a big impact because I loved how that was about finding, empowering and working with these incredible directors, and I thought the same thing could work for writers.

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.

There's not a lot of talking between actors - either between actors or between actors and directors. People think that they sit in rooms and talk about psychology and motivations. I don't think that happens much.

One reason I left local news was that I was tired of the constant musical chairs among news directors.

I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room.

Steven's Spielberg is one of the most visually talented and character-oriented directors I've ever worked with. And I learn from him every time I watch one of his movies. Good or bad - and he has made some awful movies - they're never uninteresting. He's made four or five of the greatest movies of all time. Perfect movies, like E.T. or Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan.

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

I think women have made progress in cinematography, contrary to women directors, who I think have regressed. There are many more women cinematographers than when I started.

There's a voice inside of me that I know people will relate to; I just haven't really had the opportunity to let it flourish. To sit there and explain to a guy what it's like to be a kick-ass woman is hard. I think there're only a handful of directors out there that get it.

I really like directors who give you a certain amount of autonomy because I think a lot about my characters and I think a lot about scenes and choices.