Director quotes

“Most of the great directors I've worked with - De Palma, Spike Lee - like rehearsals.”
John Leguizamo

“A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.”
Kevin Bacon

“The one I was most disappointed with, the one that should've been a great movie because it was a great script but they fired me from it, was Il mistero del principe Valiant (1997).”
Anthony Hickox

“Every director always wishes they had more time or a bigger budget.”
Anthony Hickox

“He is a nightmare! He's impossible; he doesn't turn up, he refuses to say any line that's written, it's just ridiculous.”
Anthony Hickox On Steven Seagal

“Sometimes, just sometimes, I want desperately to be a director.”
Sondra Locke

“So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it so I have some sort of pictorial reference.”
Adrian Lyne

“There are points where you become so close to an actor, you know them so well, almost as well or better than their spouse.”
Adrian Lyne

“If you're a film director, you're basically there because you enjoy manipulating people's emotions.”
Nigel Cole

“I'm not making films for middle aged journalists, who are mostly men.”
Nigel Cole

“No two directors make the same film the same way.”
Rob Cohen

“Like actors, directors get typecast.”
Randal Kleiser

“I never studied directing and I never really thought about doing it, and then I just found myself in that situation and tried it.”
Sofia Coppola

“Acting isn't for me. I don't like being told what to do. ”
Sofia Coppola

“I'm a strong-minded director with a very clear sense of what I want to do, and I just want to be left alone to do it.”
Karyn Kusama

“I don't think I'm ever going to work on a movie again where I don't have final cut.”
Karyn Kusama

“Actors know how to talk to other actors in a way that sometimes other directors just don't.”
Grant Heslov

“The real measure of good directing is knowing when not to move the camera, when not to intrude. ”
Ken Kwapis

“Once I went to film school, I realized that film directing was actually much better than theater directing.”
Mark Waters

“I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.”
Walter Salles

“A filmmaker can never be distant from his roots.”
Walter Salles

“The fact that men and women are nominated this year in films that women have directed is good for women filmmakers generally.”
Catherine Hardwicke

“Being a writer-director can sometimes make you incredibly blinkered.”
Anthony Minghella

“Who could be more desperate than filmmakers?”
Steven Shainberg

“I like to give my actors a lot of room.”
Nick Cassavetes