Quotes About Director

Every film you work on is different, and that's part of what it's like for anybody who works on a film, is to learn how to work with others. Learn from top to bottom. Actors have to learn how to work with the director and the director has to learn how to work with actors, and that's not just those two departments.

I am a director's actress in general - I depend a lot on them.

Does the manager have absolute power in England? No, it depends on a budget and on the executive director that negotiates the signings of players.

In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director - especially if he wrote part of the script himself - is clearly more the author of the movie.

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

On the clothes front, I have a designer who sits with the director for each film to chalk out a look for me based on the script.

As a director, my job is to protect. I protect scripts, actors, cameramen, designers.

I really desperately want to write and direct my own movie.

Despite a good subject if the director is not up to the mark, the execution can go wrong.

I have to see a definitive cut of the film before I even start thinking about the music, I tell the director what my feelings are and what I would like to do. He accepts what I say or discusses it or destroys it. Eventually, we have to find a compromise.

I definitely have to know every detail of a script and analyse its potential before I think further because if the director is the captain, then the script is the ship.

You - as a director, you have to do your job, you have to show things, and you don't have to ask the actors to do it, or the dialogue.

Kelly Preston is a remarkable human being and a great dramatic actress. It was a privilege as a director to tap into this part of her. Rarely do I make a kind of spiritual connection with my cast. Kelly was a wonderful exception. She is truly very special and I adore her.

As far as getting my start, it was really Norman Lear, even aside from being on 'All in the Family.' He helped me get my start as a director. He was the one who said, 'Let him do 'Spinal Tap.' Let him give it a try,' because I had been trying for years to get that thing off the ground.

Allison Jones, a big casting director out there, was like, 'They're casting 'The Daily Show' right now - you should submit a tape.' I remember leaving school to go shoot an audition.

Cannes Film Festival prefers political films. We have to target certain festivals based on our films.

The director's task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable.

Portraying Mozart is a scary task. Whenever I'm asked to portray actual historic figures, it comes with extra accountability. Not just to your director and playwright, but to the man himself and the beloved persona that the public forms.

For me, as an actor, there is no commercial or independent or art cinema. For me, it's a character that is given by the director. And it is a task for me that I have to fulfill it to the best of my ability regardless of the kind of film that it is.

It's too bad about 'Dark of the Sun.' It was really about Tshombe. When I read the script, I thought it was going to be a political movie, and I thought we might even have a hassle. But the director simplified it to brutality and bad taste.

Some of our favorite films are obviously not written by the person who directed it. And yet a 'Taxi Driver,' or some Nicholas Ray movie, like 'In a Lonely Place,' seems so personal or obsessive or whatever.

Well, the first two movies of any size that I did were a movie called 'Everybody's All American' that Taylor Hackford directed - I was pretty diva on that - and then 'Pretty Woman,' which is probably my first real breakthrough.

I suppose a good director is like a teacher. I think that someone like David Cronenberg was very much like a teacher, because there's an openness, but a certain set of rules of behavior, and a certain conduct expected. But there's an atmosphere that's relaxed and conducive to exploration, and that is created by someone like Cronenberg.

It's cool for me because I'm a director, but I'm also a teacher. I'm a lover of cinema, and I love working with people who are hungry and have the energy to really do better work.