Quotes About Director

When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

I've always pre-vized my movies, just on my own. Even when it was, like, zero-budget things, I used this programme to do storyboards because I can't draw that well.

My father was a television director and producer, working on documentaries and current affairs programmes including 'Panorama,' and I didn't think he'd find acting a sensible option. But as soon as I'd finished my A-levels, I got on a train to Edinburgh, and that was it.

As a director, there's no natural career progression. So after 'The Wackness,' which was very personal to me, I was very, very picky about what I was going to do next, to the point where I think that I was almost too picky.

Ford made some of the most progressive pictures.

I think as a director you have to make it your own. It'd be a mistake to approach a project with the idea of 'I'm going to do this the way I think somebody else would,' because then you'd never be clear on your idea.

I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do.

As a director, when you embrace a project, you try to understand as much as you can about its world, and you do that by embracing and engaging with people who are in that world. Then it's down to your best instincts, which is what most directing is about anyway.

Also, I plan to screw something up on every movie I do so that I can learn from my mistakes and become a better director with each project.

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.

I feel comfortable with either digital or film - the director and the project should determine the course of choice.

Male directors always project their own desire of women - how they want a woman to dress, to do her hair. With a woman director, it's more a projection of herself.

As a director, you've got to have quite a few projects going because you never know which one will actually come together with the financing and get the green light.

In general, a film's delay is disheartening for actors, but it's harder on the director and the producer who have been on the project for longer than anyone else. While actors move on to other projects, the film's makers don't.

But I did on projects that I produced, that I directed, that I acted in because it was important. I want to be a filmmaker. I don't want to be an actor who directs, I want to be a director. I want to be a filmmaker. So that's a big difference.

Of all the projects I've worked on, I've never worked with another director like Billy Friedkin. I think he's a genius.

I get involved with projects based on three parameters - the script, the actors involved and the director.

As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.

As president of the American Historical Association, I started a programme to make dissertations into e-books in 1999. Before I knew it, I was involved in other electronic projects. Harvard invited me to become director of the libraries in 2007.

When I make films, I work with Mike Leigh, who's the most prolific director in England.

You don't hear a film director saying 'Money mustn't go out of the industry' to actors. You don't hear a concert promoter saying 'We must make sure that money doesn't go out of our industry' to Elton John. Some people in football seem to think, 'Never mind the players, let's get on with the game.'

When I was in Mumbai for the promotion of 'Makkhi,' I met Ajay Devgn, Kajol, and Shah Rukh Khan, and I wanted to meet Aamir Khan. He was shooting out of India. I also met my favourite director, Raju Hirani. All of them showered praises on 'Makkhi.'

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun.

When you get a good script, and the director gives you proper lines, half your job is done.