Quotes About Film

I love directing because you get to see your film come to life. You get to work with the actors. There's something magical about each piece of it.

A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what's true.

I gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for 10 years and it just didn't work out.

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

Working in film, if you work with great directors, you learn that after every take you must let go. Sitting with my wife at the Academy Awards, we both let the moment just go.

I have made more documentaries in my time than I think I care to remember, though I am immensely proud of all my work.

David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing.

The predominant difference between television and film is the pace to which you work, but the development of the character or the process for playing the character isn't necessarily different.

Shooting in 3D hasn't really affected the way I work as an actor that much. Maybe that's not a good thing. Maybe I'm not being diligent enough.

Kurosawa was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled.

I think we do have our true, original stories that work. I can tell you that 'The King's Speech,' which we did, became a worldwide smash because people loved the personal story.

How can you work in film and still see the overt racism that exists in film and not just be furious all the time?

I wouldn't say anything I ever did in film would be something I'd use the word proud about. I've done better work in the theater.

You become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They're so not me. That's why films like Fight Club were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress.

In a lot of films, they're showing more complete, developed characters of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The larger concern is to be able to tastefully explore the stereotypes, and still move past them to see the core of people.

A lot of hard work goes into making a film. It's not all fun time, as people tend to think. There are always stereotypes attached to every profession, but I found out this industry breaks them all.

I think the Hindi film heroine is stereotypical. It is nice to have an opportunity to have that freedom to not to do that anymore.

You know what I did? I turned down an offer to do 'Enemy of the People' with Steve McQueen. It doesn't matter that the film was never really released. A movie like that, successful or not, adds to your credits. It leads to other roles.

Even with college, the reason I wanted to go so badly is because I wanted to major in film. I want to take screenwriting classes and learn more about behind the scenes stuff, because I love people like Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig who are able to write a lot of their own material and be so involved in everything they do.

I really think that Steven Caple, Jr. is going to be a great addition to the 'Rocky' director pantheon.

Steven Spielberg's 'The Color Purple' might as well have been about a bunch of dancing eggplants for all it has to say about black history.

I want to do an album with Steven Seagal.

'Out of Sight' is one of my favorite films ever. Love Steven Soderbergh. 'Goodfellas' was a huge influence on me in terms of the use of camera. 'Black Orpheus,' a beautiful love story that very few people actually have seen, and that was an influence on 'Beyond the Lights,' too, in terms of the look of the film.

What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.