Quotes About Director

They say that theater is the actor's medium, television is the writer's medium and film is the director's medium, and it's really true.

I don't read critics, and I don't care what they say. You can't let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it's terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production.

When I do the roles, when I'm in the room and auditioning, I'll ask the director if they're cool with me adding stuff, or just improvising while we're doing it. And I would say, like, 90 percent of the time, they say, 'Absolutely.'

You know that you're part of a Spielberg production when you've got some aliens involved, but you really know when you're sitting there at a table read, and they say, 'Steven really wanted it this way.'

For 'The Book Thief,' I wanted only one outcome, and that was for the director to follow his own vision, just as I had.

Vittorio De Sica famously made 'Bicycle Thieves'; that's the film of his everybody knows.

They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.

I'm a curious person. I pursue things based on what sparks my interest. I'm not thinking about what role I play. I don't have to be a movie director or this or that. I just want to be part of projects and places that are of interest to me.

But the privileges that one has enjoyed and exploited can sometimes turn against you: nobody thinks of you as a director, you are always an actress.

Actors, I think, are all the same. Both Korean actors and American actors are all very sensitive people, and they are all curious to know what the director thinks of them and how they are evaluated, and they try to satisfy the director. And they like it if you listen carefully to their opinions and accept them.

As a director, you can't stop a guy if he thinks something's hysterical, because if you do, then he'll get depressed because he thinks he didn't come up with a good joke. So if a guy's going on some run and it's killing him, and he thinks it's hilarious, you gotta do enough so that he thinks you can use it in the movie.

'Ashes of Time' was my third film, and as a young director at that point, it's not very often that you have the chance to make a big martial arts film, so of course I jumped at this opportunity.

If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.

So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.

I moved out to L.A. to be a filmmaker or director. I didn't even think about doing comedy or even acting. I wanted to be like Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, but I wasn't going to a lot of comedy.

There really isn't a dream role, but there's a dream situation where I could work with a director that I idolize. So, the idea of working with David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson or Scorsese or Spielberg or any of the guys I really idolize is a dream for me.

I'm a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan.

When I started working as a writer-director, that's when he became Paul Thomas Anderson and I became Paul W.S. Anderson. Neither of us can write and direct an American movie under the name Paul Anderson.

Director Jai Krishna is an optimist who has a never-say-die attitude. He has impressed me thoroughly with his faith in the industry. Not many are aware of the fact that this man had to wait for almost 30 years in this industry to direct 'Vanmam,' his first film.

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

On a Terrence Malick set, your thoughts are his voice. You think you're thinking, but actually he's thinking for you. He speaks to you, and he's the voice in your mind.

Hitler had been in power for six months. Duck Soup, said Harpo, was his most difficult movie, and the only one in which he worried about his performance. Not because of the director or the script. "The trouble was Adolph Hitler." American radio was broadcasting Hitler's speeches, and "twice we suspended shooting to listen to him scream.

An actor really suffers when the director isn't prepared because you start running out of time for the shoot and then have to do it fast.