This is one of the benefits, as well as one of the difficulties of directing a member of your family. You know where the buttons are. You can push them if you want.
I have a great team. A lot of my focus every day is with my television and film career, directing and producing, and I guess you can say that my moonlighting gig is Tropfest. Obviously, when I am not working I am in the Tropfest office full-time.
I did a video with Mick Jagger down in Rio de Janeiro. But I played a video director, and that’s the closest I’ve gotten to directing, except Bob Dylan came and had a few meetings with me about doing a video for him.
A big part of directing animation is deciding what you really want to do and making sure it’s about something. My favorite thing about animation is the storytelling. You can really dig into the story and spend time with the writers. The writers don’t just write and leave.
If I had to choose between a great acting job and a good directing job, I’d choose the directing job.
I want to act for the rest of my life – and I also want to pursue directing. Watching Bill Condon direct ‘Twilight’ kind of made me think, ‘OK yeah, I really want to do this now.’ This idea that you can make an image in your head and be in full control of how it comes out – I thought that was really cool.
The hardest part about directing is getting everyone on the same page.
I definitely want to do other things outside of acting like producing, directing.
I like directing myself; I feel like it’s one less person to give notes to. There’s an efficiency in it. I’m also kind of a control freak. So I like the fact that it gives me more control in the overall picture.
The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts.
I mean… directing is a holy, unpleasant experience, to be perfectly honest.
Acting requires emotional flexibility and demands, and directing is more cerebral and managerial and a tactical kind of thing.
I fell out of love with acting and in love with directing.
The directing is something that is incredibly satisfying to me and challenging to me because it’s asking me to draw on everything I’ve been able to absorb over all these years of acting and having all this set experience.
I’ve always been passionate about directing.
I started making music videos in my twenties and made my first feature, ‘Guncrazy,’ at 29. I then spent the greater part of my thirties directing features.
I spent most of my 20s working as an actor. I started writing and directing because I was frustrated with the types of roles that were available to young women.
If I dream that I’m directing, it’s not a film, it’s like a commercial for cotton candy, and I’ve got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I’ve got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress.
I made adult films for over 12 years. Apart from the directing aspect, I did all of it – the filming, the editing and the stills. I shot about 300 movies, which was great fun.
Acting, for me, is exhausting. I’m always more energized by directing. It’s more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It’s a huge passion for me.
I was on ‘The O.C.’ and had a small part, which wasn’t very challenging. I was a bit bored, so I started shadowing directors and they finally gave me a shot. From there, it led to directing other television shows. I am trying to direct a feature film, so we’ll see what happens.
I don’t find acting and directing schizophrenic in any way. I find it completely easy to move between the two.
Theatre is something that keeps me very alert, and I am actively creating whether I am on stage or directing. In films, I feel I become more of an introvert, going deeper in the realism of a character.
For me, running a set and directing has been the most rewarding thing of my life and a happy surprise, because it was never really on my radar.
Directing feels great; I’m really happy to be doing this.
I have no interest in directing. I’d be a bad director.
There are so many factors that go into directing. It’s honestly a logistical nightmare for a lead to direct themselves in an episode.
I love directing. I love creating things that I don’t necessarily even have to be in. I like creating worlds. So I’m getting into writing movies and selling movies and television shows and creating worlds that then get to live beyond me.
Directing a film in Hindi is definitely on the cards.
When I audition for something, I don’t even want to think about who the other actors are in it, who’s directing it.
I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else.
The beauty of my job is I do all different kinds of film directing, not just surf films anymore. And I do stuff from commercials to short films to working on feature films, and none of it is based from where I live. It’s all based elsewhere, so I can live anywhere and commute to where I need to go.
Becoming a writer, and then a director, was taking my creative life in my own hands, and wanting to have stories that I wanted to put out into the world – and I have fallen in love with directing.
In England, I’ve had a more balanced career directing and acting. It can be quite difficult to juggle the two careers.
Directing is a unique endeavor where you are in charge of so many people. As a writer, it is sort of the opposite.
I love directing. It’s where my heart is, and it’s the way my mind works.
I really, really love directing films.
Directing is something I always wanted to do. I started when I was 13 directing scenes in high school and then plays in college with my theatre company.
As a viewer, I liked screenwriter Park Jae-bum’s writing and director Kim Hee-won’s directing.
Storytelling is storytelling. You still play by the same narrative rules. The technology is completely different. I don’t use one piece of technology that I used when I started directing.
When I first started directing, I could have chosen a more lucrative path, with sitcoms and things like that. But I knew enough after the experiences I had in front of the camera that I was not going to do that, because I was just going to work on my own things or work with people I respected.
I feel like directing is more about who the individual is rather than if they’re a man or a woman. It’s kind of hard to generalize and group all of us female filmmakers into one group, like we’re all going provide you with the same thing, because we’re not. We’re all individuals.
‘The X-Files’ from the beginning was a very visual show, and with Bob Mandel directing the pilot and Dan Sackheim being involved in the production of the pilot and directing the first episode, they brought a visual style to it that was elaborated on by so many good directors.
A lot of scripts that I was given I didn’t feel were right for me, because I didn’t feel anything for them – I didn’t feel like I was going to change in life and start directing.
Definitely directing is the thing I like the most because this is where everything you know can be used. It’s the most personal process ever. It’s the most demanding one, but again, rewarding.
Business is usually a team sport. There isn’t one great person sitting there directing things. You can’t run an effective business like that.
In my mid-20s, I was directing episodes of ‘Alfred Hitchcock’ and ‘Peter Gunn.’ I was pretty much on course and – as I sometimes joke – was prepared to devote my life to become the second best film director in my family.
When I was in casting, we would bring somebody in, have them read their lines, maybe give them a few pointers, and hire them, and then once they go to the set and you have a director who’s directing them, that performance may not be anywhere near what you had in the audition, either good or bad.
I’d never thought of directing as an option for me. I don’t know why, because I’m incredibly bossy. I was surprised how collaborative it is. As the producer, you have to get the money and schedule on time, and that’s not what I do best.
Acting’s incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn’t feel quite enough. I’ve also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can’t think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.
Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don’t have to make when you’re writing.
I had a feeling about directing Cocoon II: The Return. At first I wasn’t too interested because it was a sequel. Then I read the script and was excited by the relationships and its mystic quality.
They offered me that film before I did Frida and I said, no, I’m not capable of directing. Then after seeing Julie direct, I was inspired by it. She motivated me to do it, because we don’t have role models as woman for directors.
Given a choice, I prefer directing a play to a film.
I’m 64 years old, and I’ve been acting now for 42 years. Only recently have I thought to myself, ‘Hmmm, it may be interesting to start directing.’
