Directing Quotes

I really, really love directing films.

I love directing scenes that I'm not in because suddenly I really feel like a filmmaker which is a different thing.

I never studied directing and I never really thought about doing it, and then I just found myself in that situation and tried it. I like to be observing everything else, and I get self-conscious in front of the camera.

Directing is too hard, it takes too much time, and it doesn't pay very well.

Directing is not a job. It's more like a career. Which is great!

An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

What really helps a guy to become an action hero today is the directing of the movie. All those fast cuts.

I was on cruise control from '85 to '95, and it was my fault. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original material. I wasn't directing. I wasn't writing. That's not who I am.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

Directing has only increased my admiration and respect for what it is that actors do.

I'm thinking, this is Robert Redford. You know, he's won an Academy Award, he's talking to me about directing a movie he's in. So you just think that it's Hollywood stuff or whatever.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

I just don't see where I could possibly fit in directing a feature.

I am drawn to writing and directing as it is most like the feeling I had when I was a teenager with my puppet theatre. You are more in control of everything and involved in every aspect of production, so more challenged and fulfilled.

What happens on 'Mad Men' in terms of the acting and the writing and the directing, it's superior. And yes, it has tremendous cache and buzz because it's become iconic, but it also deserves all the kudos and the awards as well, because it's a beautiful show to look at.

I will never become a director or a movie producer. I was always looking at picture directing because I didn't know what to do! You can't be a movie director without real preparation.

I think one day I want to be on the other side of the camera-maybe directing.

I look for an interesting and often times, fresh character. Something different that what is done all the time or than I've done recently. I look at who is directing. Those two variables as well as a third, which is the content and the quality of the screenplay. I look at the arcs of the scenes and characters and relationships.

I've travelled a huge amount, but almost all of it has been through work. I spent five years stationed in London in the special services of the American Air Force, producing and directing shows for the troops, which I absolutely loved.

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

We still have not been able to move into those positions in our country that are really directing traffic among that 1 percent, and that's where women have to break through.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.

Without a great man writing and directing for me, I realised I was a mediocre movie star at best.

I love directing. It's where my heart is, and it's the way my mind works.

I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

Casting is 65 percent of directing.

They didn't know anything about the candidates and things of that sort. So they needed guidance. And that league was very instrumental in directing the people in the direction to go.

I enjoy doing my more intimate and less commercial pictures and also I enjoy directing.