Film Quotes

I haven't done a lot of things in my career that my kids can watch, because they are 8, 6 and 3, and they are pretty young; so given the concepts that the film was about a superhero, it was a black superhero, and it was a father and son type partnership.

Now, it's almost impossible to go out and do a film about a new form of music.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.

I'm a private person too, and we don't ever film anything in our home because it's off limits. It's like letting people see your messy house.

When you film a reality show, it's so jumbled. They shoot episodes in all orders!

As I got older, with my work, I became aware of the responsibility of film, and I feel one of the best ways I can apply myself as an actor, is to go beyond movie stardom and celebrity.

Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off.

In animation, there's this exhilarating moment of discovery when you see the film and you say, Oh THAT'S what I was doing.

If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.

I've done movies with a sword before. But I haven't really been given the full responsibility of something like a Ridley Scott film.

If a film is very clever and well-written, that's what gives you freedom as a director.

I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.

Nobody would want to leave that film to go get high.

I think the clothes in Belle de Jour are very important to the style of the film. Even today, it is still timeless.

So, where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?

Everyone in my family is in the film business; I knew I wanted to be creative and it was important in my family to be artistic.

They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places.

'Do the Right Thing' was my first union film. I looked at the rosters, and for the most part, it was white males. Especially the Teamsters. So we had some conversations.

I could never have conceived that I would ever get to work in a Truffaut film. It was astonishing to me, and still is. I felt like an old pro, but it was still so unexpected.

You know, I always do my best, no matter the quality of the film.

Take a film of Jacques Tati like Mon Oncle which has something quite new - for me, unique - in it.

When you make a film, you like to run it with an audience. They tell you you're narrow-minded or subjective, or that seems too long, or that doesn't work.

Genre aside, I'd like to make a film about people.

I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.

Anybody can write a film script 'cuz it has been reduced to a formula.

Interestingly, I never thought I'd do an adaptation. I've also been quite against them. I think trying to translate one medium to another is wrong. I never really felt that books fitted into film. Generally people are disappointed, aren't they?

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

I'm not a film star, I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity.

Right before I got 'Sons of Anarchy,' I actually quit acting for 18 months and didn't read a single script, and I wrote a film. I felt like I needed to do something that I had control over, as an artist, and also just do something where I felt like I had some control over my life, as just a human, out in the world.