Director quotes

“Judging by the initial press reaction, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to produce and direct a motion picture or referee a fight.”

Robert Aldrich On Joan Crawford, Bette Davis

“I think the director is becoming more important. To work under rushed conditions, you need to have an extremely professional director. If the director's good than the end result will be good.”
Glenn Ford

“He agreed with me. What I didn’t tell him was that I just couldn’t go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I’d had enough of the mumbo-jumbo. I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) to me.”

Alec Guinness On George Lucas

“When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.”
James Dean

“My job, as an actor, is to give the director options.”
Johnny Depp

“I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.”
Jeff Bridges

“I have so much respect for directors. It's a tremendous amount of pressure; you have to keep steadfast and keep what you know is right.”
Robert De Niro

“The director respects what they've hired you for and chosen you for: to do the part and respect what you're doing.”
Robert De Niro

“It's part of the job of the actor to torture the director.”
Harrison Ford

“I'm quite curious and excited about seeing a new script for 'Blade Runner.' If, in fact, the opportunity would exist to do another, if it's a good script, I would be very anxious to work with Ridley Scott again; he's a very talented and passionate filmmaker. And I think it would be very interesting to revisit the character.”
Harrison Ford On Sir Ridley Scott

“There are a lot of directors I'd still love to work with. Paul Thomas Anderson is someone I'd love to work with. I think Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is very talented. Ang Lee is very talented. I mean, there are a lot of people. There are many great directors out there.”
Leonardo DiCaprio

“I have to say that whatever decisions I make, I really do think that movie making is a director's medium. They are the people that ultimately shape the film, and a director can take great material and turn it into garbage if they are not capable of making a good movie.”
Leonardo DiCaprio

“[Hollywood] is filled with people who make adventure pictures and who have never left this place... religious pictures and they haven't been in a church or synagogue for years... pictures about love and they have never been in love — ever.”
Richard Brooks

“I'm overpaid, over-stimulated, over-hyped, over-age, but I am the only person in our business who'll admit it.”
Joel Schumacher

“Tales of my toughness are exaggerated. I never killed an actor.”
John Huston

“Listen, I got three expressions: looking left, looking right, and looking straight ahead.”
Robert Mitchum

“As an actor, you work on so many films, you sort of start to see who directs well and who doesn't.”
Scott Eastwood

“I don't want to say I'm never going to direct again, but directing's hard work.”
Kyle Chandler

“For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.”
Bruce Beresford

“I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing.”
Tom McCarthy

“When Steven Spielberg comes calling, it behooves you to seriously consider it.”
Stephen Lang

“Guys like Spielberg and Zemeckis and really anybody who is a storyteller-filmmaker today has studied Hitchcock and the way he visually tells a story. ”
Ralph Macchio On Alfred Hitchcock

“The good thing about having a co-director is, these movies take so long, that it’s nice to have a collaborator who you can bounce ideas off of, and he can have ideas that help moments, and have someone to have a conversation with and develop the film with.”
Chris Renaud

“My job as the director is to make that as authentic as I can and not to disturb the revelry.”
Scott Hicks

“I conceive of a scene from the perspective of how things feel for the characters, and how are they seen/felt from the character's interior perspective.”
Tom Tykwer