Top 30 Jennifer Yuh Nelson Quotes

I don’t think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I’ve had female students say to me afterwards, “I never envisioned myself being a director, since I’ve never seen women do it.” But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we’ll see more female directors.

I only think in live action.

When you make a movie, it’s just so personal and then you put it out in front of people and it becomes something else.

I walk into a room, and people see me as a director, not a woman.

I’ve been asked about the glass ceiling a lot, and I don’t think of myself as some kind of crusader going around smashing glass. I don’t feel like I had to – and that is a very, very strong flag showing the people around me made it, so I didn’t have to.

I don’t believe in overcooking the actors too much. Especially when it’s a real performance that I’m looking for.

If the actor doesn’t feel it’s right, that’s when you say, ‘OK, let’s find something else.’ It’s then that you get the natural moment.

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right – that’s something you can’t rush.

I’m a hard-core geek.

It’s important to listen to the actor who is there on the stage and living it.

I think in the experience of growing up and realizing who you are, what your place in the world is can be quite scary.

I always want to do a big finale.

You have to figure out how you can step forward and affect your own life. I think that sense of empowerment is actually really positive, specifically for the young generation because they’ve been bystanders in their own lives for a while.

Going into live action, the perception I had was that to be a director, you had to be loud, you had be physically fit, wear cool hats, have a beard, and yell, ‘Action!’ really loud. And I’m none of those things.

I think the idea of a distant, far off dystopia, where the world is completely different from what we have now, is good, but it’s been done. Especially in YA movies.

I like to draw, and my drawings are what yell and scream for me.

I like action movies, and I prefer to watch a bad Hong Kong action movie to just about anything else.

There aren’t a lot of female story artists, and it’s baffling to me. There are a lot of kids in school that are female and I wonder, ‘Where did they all go?’ People have brought it up, asking me, ‘What did you do?’ I don’t really know. I puttered along, did my thing and gender has really never been an issue.

I’m a very soft-spoken person. I don’t throw furniture. I don’t throw tantrums.

I couldn’t imagine screaming ‘Action!’ on an outdoor set over a wind machine or whatever.

I’m not aggressive by nature and it was tough for me to make the transition to directing.

I want a space for people to feel safe and be creative. Actors want it, too. They want to feel like they’re listened to, and they’re safe to experiment.

I’ve been watching things like ‘Master of the Flying Guillotine’ since I was 5.

I’ve been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

The great thing about computer animation is that all of those environments exist as three-dimensional worlds, so these VR worlds already exist.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it’s getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

It’s really helpful to have somebody to bounce off of and that will say, ‘Yeah, that’s a horrible idea. You shouldn’t do it.’

When we were first creating the look of ‘Kung Fu Panda,’ we wanted to pay tribute to the beautiful tradition and culture of China.

If you have a movie that doesn’t strive to go to a certain emotional point, you can do anything and it will be fine and funny. But if you have something pretty emotional at its core, you have to make it right. You don’t want it overwrought or unearned. Everything has to be moving towards this one thing.

My producer for the first ‘Kung Fu Panda’ movie, Melissa Cobb, is an amazing woman. She’s supersmart and helps push everyone – male, female, anyone – to do their best.