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.

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.

Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.

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."

I would say it was the directors. We have to give credit to the directors for this, because in the script, we just said, "Gru's Minions do this or do that" in the initial draft. And then, they came up with the characters' design and the philosophical concept of the Minions. And then, we started writing to that. We have to give a lot of credit to them.

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.

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.

I go where the material is, and I feel like I'm looking for really strong directors. That's the key ingredient. There are some directors I would move the sun and earth for, or stop the rotation of the planets, just to work with them.

The hardest thing for a film actor, especially if you are in a lot of the film, is sustaining energy for the entire length of a production. It's quite tough. With acting, it's not the same as directing. Directors work the exact same hours; directing is incredibly exhausting. The only difference is that directors aren't required to have bursts of energy and focus. They're probably focused the entire day. Actors have this thing of "stop/start." That can be quite draining, actually.

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.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors.

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.

If Martin Scorsese calls, I am available. And then there the ones, well, you can just run down the list - any of those Oscar-nominated films, they have amazing directors across the board.

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.

I think one third of my work is with first-time directors because I think I should, you know? Really, the difference between a first-time director and a second- or third-time director - I mean there's no director who makes enough movies anyway - but if they're talented, they have it. And there is no movie that is perfect.

I've worked with a lot of directors, some of them you wouldn't really attach the word 'artist' to their name.

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

There are the obstacles of your position as an actor, not being a commodity enough to be hired by the big directors for projects that have some kind of integrity, because the successful actors who've been in the game for a while want those roles. So there's more competition, so you have to work harder and be right for it.

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

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've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.

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?

Actors, writers, directors - that triumvirate of creativity - we have to rely and trust each other to be able to get to the final product.

It takes great skill to tell a compelling story in under 60 seconds. These five directors have mastered the format, using their talent, craft and imagination to provide us with some of the most innovative filmmaking out there today.

Learn how to draw. It's the basis of what we [animation directors] do. Keep a sketchbook. Try making a very simple little film. Try and tell a story clearly and entertainingly. Study the way people move and animate move. Observe all you can, and try and capture that simply in a few lines on paper.

I have many valentines. My mom and my sister and my directors. I got calls from all of them. And my friends. I respect what Valentine's Day stands for because it is about love

That excites me, working with really excellent people, be it wonderful directors or actors or cinematographers and especially writers. My work life is going to a set and having these great experiences and coming home shifted by them.

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

Directors typically have three choices - you do a studio movie and get a paycheck up front, you do an independent movie, which is for your heart and you don't get paid up front and probably don't make any money on it, but it hopefully goes to Sundance and is more of an art movie, and then you do TV.

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

Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let's put it this way: It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

Children of Men is a solemn, haunting picture, but it's also a thrilling one, partly because of the sheer bravado with which it's made. It left me feeling more fortified than drained. [Director Alfonso] Cuarón, the most openhearted of directors, prefers to give rather than take away.

I think actors do make really, really wonderful directors.

I love working with women directors. They don't mind making you cute.

I watch movies all the time, so it's hard to pick certain specific directors that have inspired me in the aggregate.

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.

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.

Ambiguity in directors is a hard thing to deal with.

There's no such thing as "an auteurist filmmaker." Every film directors is an auteur. We only make films that we do because we cannot put on clothes that don't fit us.

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

That's the trouble with directors. Always biting the hand that lays the golden egg.

I don't think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I've had female students say to me afterwards, "I never envisioned myself being a director, since I've never seen women do it." But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we'll see more female directors.

I love westerns. John Ford is one of the 10 best directors.

A lot of directors are overbearing and tend to make you doubt your instincts.

If a good actor wants a role, they'll do whatever it takes to get the part. Directors are the same. We do 'meetings', not auditions: that tells you a whole lot more about an actor, too.

I am a pathetic and gushing Nick Hornby fan, and I wanted to be in High Fidelity, and I wanted to be in About A Boy, and those two directors - one who's a dear friend, and one who has never cast me in anything, despite my pleading... So there was another Nick Hornby script going around being cast by a friend of mine, and she said, "There's a very small role in it, but you'd be right for it." I was like "I don't care how small, I'm going to be in this Nick Hornby film."

I prefer to work with first-time directors.

I want to work with great directors. I want to work on good material with good actors. I've probably done 20 movies at this point and a lot of independents. It's been an incredible ride and I love it and I'm just going to keep going and doing what I'm doing.