Quotes About Directors

It's not that writing staffs don't change at all, but they don't change very much. Directors are freelancers. There are directors who do five or 10 episodes of a show every year for years, but most directors are freelance, they come and go.

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."

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.

I subscribe to the great George G. Scott quote, "All actors are in trouble. Directors who don't help are a pain in the ass". We all need help from directors. We are all equally insecure.

Bollywood directors are like cricketers where in one match you score a century, and in the next match, you are out for a duck! Moreover, very few directors are consistent in Bollywood.

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.

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.

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.

There have been directors that I did not enjoy working with, but for the most part I realize that I have been unbelievably spoiled in my career because I have worked with some of the greatest, greatest directors ever.

I think directors should be confident in their leadership capabilities. I think directors should be confident in what they want to do.

It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.

My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I'm pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.

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

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.

I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.

There's a bunch of directors that I really admire, and Australian ones as well. It would be nice to do a film at home.

Directors always used to be like the police to me - the enemy, the people to tell me what to do when I didn't want to do it. But I've lived with one for a while now and I guess I can put myself more in their position. You shouldn't be too sympathetic to them.

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.

We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.

I've certainly worked with really great directors who haven't acted.

We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.

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".

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

Yeah, the actors really come in as lumps of clay. We're ready to work with the directors and find our way. These guys really come in having done their work.

Now at my age I understand how sad it must have been for some directors or actors at the time the talkies began. Because, really, a whole continent disappeared.

I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff. So, getting to work with those kinds of directors and getting to tell those stories is what I want to do.

I've worked with very few directors who've asked of me what I asked of myself.

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.

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 think the press is doing a wonderful job of putting the pressure on the decision-makers in Hollywood to support more female directors.

[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.

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.

I just follow my nose, and instead of letting someone run my affairs and probably make me wealthy within a matter of years, I've just kept the board of directors down to zero. I make all the decisions, and they can't all be right, and my lifestyle is very expensive, so that means I have to work a lot. It's the opposite side of the coin from sinking back into the recliner and becoming somebody they bury.

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 just want to do everything. As broad as that seems, it's kind of the plan. There are so many different genres out there to do, so many different characters to play, so many different amazing actors and directors to work with. I'm just following my gut, and if it's speaking to me, then I'm doing it.

I think actors do make really, really wonderful directors.

In some cases, the casting directors have casted blindly and have not looked into my ethnic background

The greatest directors are the greatest users. They use people's talents to tell the story that they want to tell.

Three directors whose work directly influences mine are Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and Susanne Bier (her Danish films). You'll notice that they all don't make feel good movies, same as me, and their films are always visually simple but beautiful (and I hope mine are!).

I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little... We measure our performance in seconds.

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.

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.

I love working with women - I love women - and we need more women directors. We need more feminine sensibilities in movies.

Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.

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

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

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.