Lee Daniels Quotes
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I think this last film I finished, 'The Butler,' is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire.
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I worked at Warner Bros. for a while. I was the head of the minority talent casting. It was like pre-Spike Lee and post-blaxploitation era.
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In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans.
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When you're paying everybody nothing, I mean, they have homes to pay for. And my movies are like putting on theater. Nicole Kidman is at craft services, and John Cusack is moving furniture; there are no egos. The only ego is the story.
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I'm still pulled over... We were nominated for two Oscars for 'Monster's Ball,' and I almost didn't make the Oscars because I got pulled over in Beverly Hills.
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I am so used to having two faces. A face that I had for black America and a face for white America. When Obama became president, I lost both faces. Now I only have one face.
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I had 'Push' and 'The Paperboy' next to my bed for many years. Those are some of the great, great novels.
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When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar.
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When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story.
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Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.
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My mom had five kids. And she came home after working three jobs, and I'd rub her feet. We'd all rub her feet. We were lucky to get any time with her.
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I want to see movies I can walk away from and say, 'Wait, what happened there? Hold up, what did I just see? What?' and then it connects to something that you personally, unequivocally know to be truth.
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I drank from colored water fountains and from the white water fountain just to see what it was like when I was a kid. What shocks me is that these kids today don't realize that this happened in many of our lifetimes.
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I was always intrigued with European cinema, and hated most American cinema. I didn't like the one, two, three - boom! style, with a neat and tidy ending. That was never my scene.
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My earliest experience was reading Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' at 8, you know, with a bunch of kids on my steps - on the stoops - and knowing that I wanted to direct them saying the lines. I don't really know how to articulate that 'cause there wasn't someone to show me.
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I moved on to a nursing agency as a receptionist just to get a job, and ended up managing it, which led to me opening my own - say your mom is sick and needs someone to help her, then you call something like what I had: a home health agency.
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I hate white people writing for black people; it's so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices.
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That's the gift 'Precious' has given me. You really think you're telling a story about a fat black girl, and only fat black girls will understand it, and then you realize we're all Precious.
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When you have a lot of siblings, you always do something to feel special.
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I wanted to make a black 'Dynasty.'
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Most of my friends are dead. I watched friends die in my arms at 5, 6, 8. When I grew up, the rest of my friends died of AIDS.
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I think the father-son love story is a universal one which transcends color.
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When people don't like the film, I can take a bullet. I don't mind you talking about me, but I'm protective of my actors, because they bared their soul for me.
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I want to live in my truth. Tell me you don't like me, and I know it. But when you don't tell me, and you work behind my back, it's a lie, and I don't know how to fight that.