Lee Daniels Quotes
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I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful.
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I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world.
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I'm a filmmaker. I'm always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we're making people think.
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I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.
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I'm in a great place because I trust people behind the camera as I go off, and I still go back to my day job and do film.
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People enjoy making fun of people who are famous; they love putting people down.
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If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me.
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I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills.
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I like to show the grey area in all my characters.
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As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace.
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I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.
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I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.
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I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people.
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Putting on a movie is like going to war - for me, at least. It's all about time; time is money, and we don't have it. So it's all about getting to know each other intimately quickly. You are with family members that you like or don't like, but you can't leave them because you're stuck with them.
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I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.
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Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be.
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I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.
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'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.
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I have a partner, Danny Strong; he's an incredible writer and, really, my backbone. So when we don't see eye to eye, it's painful.
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I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.
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I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.
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To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play.
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I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.
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While I am not a musician, I love music. I have over 15,000 songs on my iPod. Everything from hard core rap to the soundtrack from the original 'Cinderella.'