Directors Quotes

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

Give me a good script, and I'll be a hundred times better as a director.

My parents said, Oh, he's going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.

'Ides of March' I did for scale - scale as a director, scale as an actor, scale as a writer.

It's a roll of the dice when you're a first time director so I prefer to work with people that know more than I do, but that happens less and less as you get older.

Good directors can bring certain things out of you, with their intensity or gentleness or sensitivity or understanding. They can make an actor feel he can do no wrong.

The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting

I was fortunate enough to work under directors who were, most of them, brilliant, emotional men.

Jamie Foley - he's a very different energy to [director] Sam [Taylor-Johnson]. The whole experience was actually quite different.

It's harder being a woman director because on the whole women don't have husbands or boyfriends who are willing to be wives

I produce the way I would love to be produced: In ways to create the best conditions to make your movie, but also to create a space in which the director calls the shots.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

I enjoy looking at words on paper and visualizing how to make them come to life. As a director, the creative process is really amazing.

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.

I am a very impatient director.

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer.

I think all directors should be animators.

What I like in pictures whether by an old director or a young director is when I have the feeling he or she is really using the capacity of film.

Ultimately in the end, it's the director's choice

If all the world's a stage and all the people players, who in bloody hell hired the director?

I've actually been given a great gift. When I walk into an audition with a director, I'm carrying no baggage. They haven't seen me in anything, even though I've done nine films.

Being a good director is knowing sometimes when not to say something.

The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything.

In my first film, Five Corners, I played a very scary, violent crazed character, and it exposed me to a lot of directors.

I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing, and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works.

I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.

Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.

When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director.

Every casting director I've met is a woman.

I do believe female directors, as well as our female writer, can bring out male vulnerability that some men can't because they can't face it.

Picking projects, it's always director first and then script. Those two things are pretty much head-to-head.

Every character I've ever played, I always try to take him right to the edge and not allow him to fall over, but directors have a tendency to pull me back a little bit.

I feel like a good director provokes you to ask questions about your character, but doesn't answer them for you.

I'm like a movie director, so wherever I feel that I need to go over this type of beat, that's what I'm going to do, that's where I'm going to go.

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly.

A director is a choreographer, both politically and creatively.

[Making movies is] 80% script and 20% getting great actors. There's nothing else to it.

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.

I'm one of the few directors that actually shoots a lot in camera.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

Above all, a director has to be a good captain.

The best thing that I learned from the best directors that I worked with is that the best answer wins. They are ego-less when it comes to doing the most important thing.

I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has.

Time management is a big part of the director's job.

Over the years with movies, I've given directors notes.

I'm not interested in being a celebrity; I'm interested in being a better actor and a better director.

The best thing about switching from being an actor to being a director is that you dont have to shave or hold your stomach in anymore.

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

Performers are so vulnerable. They're frightened of humiliation, sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it's warm, where it's OK to fail - a kind of home, I suppose.