Director Quotes
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Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.
Terrence McNally
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The core of a director is the person's tastes in what elements go together and how they go together. It's a puzzle.
Andre Ovredal
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We're not allowed in the cutting room - and that's extraordinary. So, when a director is asking for certain nuances and colours and we feel that they're phoney, but we do it because the director asks for it, that's the one that they pick in the cutting room. And I contend that when you see a movie with bad acting, don't blame the actor... blame those guys in the cutting room because they like that take.
Dustin Hoffman
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"A good director is one that lets you improv," that's ridiculous. There's some actors who should not be improving and there are some scripts that should not be touched. I think it's just a case by case basis.
Ben Younger
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For a shot, I had to look like I've slipped on wet floor and hurt my back. My director wanted me to just act it out, but I insisted on doing it with water on the floor to make it look authentic. He was against the idea, but I did it and almost broke my back.
Harshvardhan Rane
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I have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.
Karen Allen
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As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.
Joseph Kosinski
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I just trust the director and never overanalyse the script, screenplay, etc. You are just taking a bet at the end of the day, so confidence, be it on the filmmaker or the script, is all that counts.
Ravi Teja
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There is an isolated experience to being a director. It's very communal because there's a crew, but it's only you. You're the one on the hook.
Noah Baumbach
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The thing that I think a director has to have in order to make a movie really work, and to certainly make a film that feels personal, which I hope this one does, is that you have to have a sense of the feeling that you want to create in people, the tone which you want to tell the story, and the basic themes you want to come out. You can't compromise on those because you are then not making the movie that you are going to be good at telling.
George Nolfi
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I got to work with Robert DeNiro once and it was a strange experience. Gwyneth Paltrow and I were doing Great Expectations movie together and we were complaining about what a mediocre film experience it was. DeNiro showed up on set and all of a sudden the director got better, the director of photography got better - everybody got more interested and excited. DeNiro isn't waiting for other people to create the environment that he wants, he brings it along with him.
Ethan Hawke
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So, most of it was done over the phone. But one of the first things I did as a director, because it's one of the first things you should do, even though most don't, is to ask good actors who they think is right for the part. They know better than anybody. But without missing a beat Maggie said Pauline Collins. I didn't know Pauline because I hadn't seen Shirley Valentine, but then I saw this thing that she did with Woody Allen "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger", in which she was wonderful as a psychic, and I said to her on the phone: "The dialogue seemed improvised."
Dustin Hoffman
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What a director is looking for is someone who will follow you and no matter what. And if you ask for blue, he's gonna try blue. And if you say, give me a piece of red with it, and they try. And you don't mind so much if it's difficult to get the blue and the red together. As long as they try. And as long as they give everything they can to give you what you want. That's what I'm looking for.
Luc Besson
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When Shana Alexander interviewed me for Life magazine in 1952, she gave up after 4,000. At one time or another, I've worked for every studio in Hollywood, for almost every director with most of the actors and actresses.
David Sharp
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Your director is your everything and you devote yourself to them and you want to help create their vision.
Natalie Portman
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If you have a script that's not great, if you have a great director, you can make a great movie, but if you have a great script with a director who's not good, never are you going to have a good movie.
Monica Bellucci
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I don't storyboard like some. I mean, all directors are different. I plan meticulously - really meticulously.
Paul Greengrass
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I think the mark of a good director is that they surround themselves with good people.
Sarah Gadon
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It's seldom that you get to work with one director more than once. I've worked with Clint Eastwood three times, but that's the only one that's happened with, simply because I adore his work.
Morgan Freeman
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I'm not a director that's about precision and control and perfection, I'm about creating an atmosphere that's organic and interesting and then letting people loose, and for that there's no greater actor or performer than children. Animals are maybe a close runner-up.
David Gordon Green
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We get hit with the 'jukebox musical' label, but book authors Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and director Des McAnuff accomplished a 50-50 split between music and drama, ... The music is very important, but the history of the group makes it a great piece of theater.
Bob Gaudio
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But I would like to think that it's the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor.
Ray Walston
