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.
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As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.
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I'm not as eager to go just work to work. I have another life outside of it, and if I'm pretty sure the movie's not going to have a life, or if it's not a director I believe in, then I probably will say no.
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Every director is themselves; they're not playing a part.
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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.
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I never think of myself as a big star. Getting good scripts is all I think about. I don't have a godfather or anyone to take care of me. To move forward, I have to be very careful in choosing the right scripts, the right director, and the right technicians.
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There are definitely reasons to do certain things, but I like to stick to good director, good actor, good script.
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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.
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I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.
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We didn't have a lot of time to really prepare for a great chemistry. It was more instantaneous and instinctive. In the morning I went to Daniel Craig trailer and if I wanted to make some changes there was sort of a go between me and the director. It was good because Daniel is always like, "C'mon let's go for it. Let's fight for it!"
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The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.
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I think the first feature of any director is going to hold a special place in their heart. It's kind of like a first kiss in that its highly anticipated and will be forever ingrained in your memory, but at the end of the day you're just trying not to slobber all over the other person.
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There's nothing worse than a director that keeps changing their mind. Because, unlike the directors I work with, I'm not decisive at all.
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Your director is your everything and you devote yourself to them and you want to help create their vision.
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I operate the camera, I always do it when I'm the director, and I like to approach it as a documentary, finding the images based on what happens, as it happens.
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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.
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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."
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An actor gets to take a nap, but the director is working hard from dawn till midnight. I'm kind of lazy.
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Just being hired by a great director is complimentary.
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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.
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I think the mark of a good director is that they surround themselves with good people.
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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.
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The lead actor, along with the director, plays a big role in what the vibe will be on set, and that's a huge responsibility.
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I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.
