Director Quotes

As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.

That's why I had to leave Hair on Broadway, because I did it for about a year, and one night I was doing the show, and I realized, well, this is not real. I told the director. He says, man, it was a killer show tonight.

I will work with a director who has good material because at the end of the day, that's what counts.

Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.

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.

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

Usually, I don't want to sit down and listen to the director gas on about his movie. I just can't actually imagine myself sitting down and having that much to say.

When I was nine years old I use to copy ( not trace ) the covers of the Donald Duck comics. Many years later I became a close friend of Jack Hannah, the director of the Donald Duck film shorts.

You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.

On set I keep myself to myself; I'd rather the director speak up. I'm not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.

I got an internship with the casting director of The Girl Next Door. I would hold the clipboard and help them in their casting sessions and get them lunch.

I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.

Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.

I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I've given up any hope of being considered a director.

Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are - maybe not all of them. But it's up to you to put in the amount. It's up to the director to nag you until you get it right.

The film is a direct mirror of the director. If your director doesn't know how to dress, there will be an aesthetic of the film that won't come through - whether it's in the costumes if he doesn't know exactly what he wants or the look of the film.

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 that for the actors, the last thing that they want is a director that's not watching, a director that goes 'Okay, it sounded good to me,' and they were doing something else or preoccupied with something else because they were worried about the light changing.

I seemed to belong to three countries: I had an apartment in Paris, a house in Hollywood, and when I married British theater director Peter Hall, I moved to London.

I want to take roles that challenge me and I want to like the script and obviously feel connected with the director because the director to me is so important.

The director calmed me down and told me I was being too hard on myself. He went on to say that I wasn't quite as bad as I thought, but needed to tone things down a bit.

It's a morality film, and it poses the question "What would you do?" I took it very seriously, just as the director did in terms of atmosphere and lighting, and I was just trying to help that vision along.

The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.

I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say, 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.

A lot of the things that we've been able to do in the last several years were Democratic ideas, including the structure for this new director of national intelligence.

If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.

As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.

The thing I love about acting is that it's got nothing to do with me; it's about bringing forth a director's vision. It's like a release. I'm glad it's come back into my life.