Quotes About Directors

It's entirely to do with personality, I think. There are good directors who talk a lot, bad directors who talk a lot, and good directors who don't say much and vice-versa. It just depends on whether people respond to that personality and whether people have a willingness to do something for them.

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.

There`s only one list that`s more illustrious than the list of directors who won the Palme d`Or. It`s the list of directors who didn`t.

I feel like I've been very lucky with the directors. The characters I've been offered, especially lately, have given me the opportunity to play all of these different women. I always wanted that, and it's something that you cannot do by yourself. If you want to play a diversity of characters, somebody else has to have the imagination to give you a role completely out of the box. We depend on somebody else's trust, and these directors are giving me their trust, and I am grateful for 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.

We all like indie directors - heck, I even married one... but we're divorced now.

As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.

The assistants in France are not like they are in the States. Assistants are much more close to the film directors, and they used to have a kind of very artistic task. They used to do the casting, scouting, and so forth.

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

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.

I love working with new directors. There's so much drive and effort. It still comes down to the character for me, but if it's a character I really want to play, I would never not do the project because of a new director.

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.

Directors and producers were afraid of a Dumont actor while at the same time they admired him.

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

I read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and critics.

Now that I'm taking some time off from school, I've been reading a lot to make sure I don't forget everything. It's mostly classics and nonfiction accounts from actors, directors and writers from the '40s and '50s

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 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.

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.

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.

I am sure I am one of 2000 film directors in the world that Tarantino admires.

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'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.

[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'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."

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.

Because I've always aspired to direct and produce, I've literally worked with about 200 directors and countless producers, so what I appreciate is how, through osmosis and through actually asking questions and through people offering wisdom, there's a lot in there.

To televisionize any serious problem, the program directors face the task of making the message 'go down smooth' until the audience is delivered to the commercial.

I've worked with a lot great directors who have huge resumes, but I'm really trying to be active in my career in supporting the new generation of cinema. I like taking some time to try to support and be a part of that.

My dad is an engineer by trade but worked a lot with the people in the Indian film industry when I was growing up. He started out distributing films from India here in the '70s because there was no place to go for people to watch movies from the homeland. So he developed a network of actors, writers, directors, and musicians that became his friends and that he would tour around the country with, doing stage shows of the musical numbers from their films.

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.

It's just unfair that talent of color aren't given the same opportunities as white and male actors, directors, producers, writers, et cetera.

By the time May rolls around, I'm probably going to want to spend a month on an island. But if Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh or any number of directors were to say 'Hey, there's this role, are you interested?' I'd be there in a flash

I believe you can never stop growing and learning and I've been very fortunate to have been working since I was 10 or 11-years-old. I have learned so much throughout the years working with amazing directors and great actors as well. This was really a huge step for me because it's very different from anything that I've done before but I think the biggest difference here is that the cast we were surrounded by in this movie was unbelievable.

I don't come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background.

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head.

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

In my experience, directors who are the most comfortable with themselves and confident in their work give you and everybody on the crew the freedom and the space to create. It's the people who are more insecure who feel the need to control and micromanage.

With every movie I produce, I learn something. I watch the directors. It's like the relationship you have with your children. I'm there to learn from my daughters. They are the perfect spirits.

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.

Look out for each other. I think the more we support each other as a community, the more successful we will be. I'm a part of Film Fatales, a collective of women directors who meet to share advice and provide support for each other's projects. I think the more we can build an old girls' network to rival the old boys' network, the better off we will be.

Growing up and applying to college, I just imagined that I would study acting. But then, once I went to college, I realized I was more interested in all the aspects of filmmaking as opposed to all the aspects of theater, which is what you would have to do if you studied acting at a liberal arts school. And so I thought, "Oh, I'll meet directors and filmmakers, and I'm an actress, so I'll become friends with them and hopefully be in their movies." And then It worked!

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.

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

I don't want to get locked into any one type of genre. I just want to constantly be working with amazing directors and amazing actors, and just always pushing the envelope on what I can do, as an actor.