Quotes About Director

That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.

My father is an action director from 35-40 years and I've seen how things work in the industry all my life and I was being patient to get the right opportunities and not rush to take up anything.

When I was 16, I was in a film called 'The Patriot.' I spent every second I could on the set watching the director and his team bring America circa 1775 to life. From that moment on, I was hooked.

I went to Quigley Seminary and didn't have the time for basketball because I had to catch the bus after school to get home to Joliet. But Paul Mattei, then the athletic director at DePaul, saw me in one of the few games I did play for Quigley and told me if I decided to leave the seminary, he'd want me to come and play at DePaul.

I'm not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, 'This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.' I usually say, 'I know who would be good for this. It's not me.'

Paul Verhoeven might be my favorite director, and I'm serious.

Paul Verhoeven is one of my favourite directors. I love his ability to mash extreme violence with humour and satire.

I remember that it was never that difficult for me to get a director to look up and pay attention to me. Mind you, I don't know if that's necessarily charm. But I've played roles where my character has to be charming and I've found it quite easy to do. I think some of it is in my bones, but some of it is more deliberate.

A director's job is like parenting. You have to look after your actors like children, pay attention to each of their different abilities.

As a producer, I have the luxury of coming and going according to my convenience. As a director I cannot do that. I gave up my acting career at its peak for the same reason.

I don't think it's a director's job to peek behind the curtain too much.

As a director, what matters is how you penetrate the soul of the person in front of the camera and let the actor blur the boundaries between the character and the person themselves. In order to achieve that, I try to make people feel at ease, to be mindless of problems and be skinless and give everything to the camera.

That's the best way to work on a project: talk to the director. In the end, it's the director's idea of how they perceive the movie and how they perceive the characters.

Every time you say yes to a film there's a certain percentage of your yes that has to do with the director, a certain percentage to do with the story, a certain percentage with the character, the location, etc.

Once I started working as an assistant director, I just realized very quickly that working on a film set was just a perfect fit for me.

As the days progressed, I felt as if YNK' was my first film. That is because the director was hellbent on perfectionism. He was insistent about getting the best out of me.

Jim Cameron is a feisty man and a perfectionist, but also absolutely brilliant.

I think a director is hugely responsible for the fate of a film, so if it does well, he should be appreciated. As an actor, I can only perform well or choose to work with a good director in a good film.

You act in a movie, and at the end of the day, the director and editor decide what your performance is.

I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.

I feel whatever an actor does on screen is something the actor 'does,' and what the director can do is to tell, talk or instruct. So, all the credit for an actor's performance goes to the actor alone.

The nature of the beast is that film is a director's medium. It's not a Tracy Letts play, it's a John Wells film. 'August: Osage County,' as a play, is done. Written. On the shelf. It'll be performed in its entirety for years.

I'm a performer, comedian, entertainer, writer and director.

The only thing that I can contribute as director is to work with the performers in a way that brings out the drama.