Every actor or director has their ups and downs.
The director is a Canadian, Jeff Stephenson, and any time I get a script that has any Canadian component, I’m always immediately much more interested.
I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something – a great success. I’m very proud of it.
I will argue my points; I will have my opinions. But at the end of the day, it’s the director’s choice.
Bollywood looks only at the box office numbers. If the film earns money, it is usually because of the hero and the director. It is about Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan.
I think Van Sant is the most important American director we have. He takes the most risks. He’s just pure to me.
I was called the greatest director in Europe, but I was just a hard worker.
I just trust the director and never overanalyse the script, screenplay, etc. You are just taking a bet at the end of the day, so confidence, be it on the filmmaker or the script, is all that counts.
If I weren’t a director, I would want to be a film composer.
My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on ‘Far North,’ and she had designed my student film, ‘The Sheep Thief.’
I choose movies, I never choose roles. I look at the script. I look at the director. I look at the other actors – and then the role.
Every actor you work with has a different method, same with the director. You have to figure out what your shared language is and how to best support each other, and also take care of yourself.
It is really a sad state of affairs if I am still the only commercially successful woman director. We need a lot more commercially viable women, not only in direction.
I have a music-video background, and I feel like the responsibility of a music-video director is to do something that hasn’t been done before in a really cool visual way. So much innovation has come in filmmaking through music videos.
My English teacher always gave me scripts for plays, but I was into sports. My friend said there were small parts I could go up for, but the director gave me the part of Mozart, which was kind of the lead role. From then on I just loved it.
I don’t know how it is in other industries, but as far as our industry is concerned, everybody takes their energy from the director. I myself was very exhausted, but I was acting as if I was full of energy and was pumping it into the whole team.
I think I’m drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.
‘Independent’ means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director’s voice is extremely present. It’s such a pretentious term, but it’s auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist… Whatever word you want.
It’s an important thing to have a relationship with the director, and have it be a positive one.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and then I got this call from a casting director in Los Angeles. She remembered me from something years before, and she called my mom wanting me to audition for this thing.
It’s not just about acting. I love film, I’m a director now, I love writing, I love producing, I love having a company that makes films and to be prolific and have a place to put all the ideas that are constantly bubbling up inside of me and that don’t let me sleep at night.
When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that’s not going to be me. So when David Fincher comes along and wants to direct ‘The Social Network,’ when Bennett Miller comes along and wants to direct ‘Moneyball,’ or when Danny Boyle wants to direct ‘Jobs’? Hallelujah. I want them directing it.
Larry Kasdan is a great director.
I’ve always noticed a difference between working with a director and working with a writer/director. In how much they’re invested and how specific they are.
I’m an actress who likes a strong, communicative director.
I agree that at the end of the day, it’s a man’s world, but when I’m doing a film, I am working with the director, not a man or a woman.
Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that’s continually trying to erode that.
Jason Reitman is an amazing director; he’s really amazing with his actors and crew.
But I would like to think that it’s the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor.
Gastronomy is my hobby. I’m simply the casting director. Once I’ve brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.
As a director, it is important to understand the actor’s process.
A director should not define everything. For me, the movie is a form of a question I pose to the others or to the audience. I want to ask their opinion on my point of view and discuss it with them.
The director respects what they’ve hired you for and chosen you for: to do the part and respect what you’re doing.
Egotism is not a good quality. It’s not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn’t be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn’t be tolerated in a movie director.
The audience has always been my best director.
My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, ‘OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it’s like.’ I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing ‘Memory.’ I was terrible. Terrible.
I did my first movie, ‘The Mambo Kings,’ in America without speaking the language. I learned the lines phonetically. I had an interpreter actually just to understand directions from my director.
Films should involve a director’s idiosyncrasies as much as possible I think.
Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.
It is an honor for me to accept the position of men’s artistic director for Louis Vuitton. I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times.
It was weird because I was pregnant, throughout that so it was weird being a pregnant witch. I was in a really bad mood but luckily, because I sleep with the director, he just sort of scheduled me so I only had to do it two nights.
I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.
My director Shakun Batra, I believe, is one of the finest in the industry and he has been the dream director I’ve always wanted to work with.
I feel fine, I don’t care who the director is. All you have to do is know what your doing – all of us – everybody in the business – that’s all you ask anyone – you know your job, I know mine, let’s go do it.
And also, Sergio Leone was considered in Italy a director of category B, not a big director.
I’ll work with a director if I think I’m going to get into a comfortable situation, and if it’s someone I respect and who respects me, even if they’re not so well known. Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best.
You either are a good director or you’re not.
By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.
If your director knows what he wants on screen, it makes things easier.
I always say that I’m not the director, I’m part of the team.
If I have enough ego to say I’m a writer, a director, a producer, and an actor, I should have the energy and the knowledge to write a scene for this great actor named Henry Fonda and direct him in it and have it work.
Sam Wood, the director, made most of his money as a real estate agent; there was nothing of the temperamental artist about him.
Loveleen Tandon, the casting director of ‘Brick Lane,’ understood my capacity and suggested my name to director Sarah Gavron. The film has such universal appeal that given a chance I would like to remake it in Hindi.
I think that’s the key to being a director: to be able to get the shot and move on quickly.
I read the script and try not to bring anything personal into it. I make notes, talk to the director and we decide what kinds of shades should be in the character.
I’m trying to interpret the film through the director’s head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.
I need a producer who will look for a good script. I need a director whose purpose to make a film is not for his survival but because he loves making films.
It’s an honour for the entire ‘Baahubali’ team to be associated with Karan Johar, since he is the biggest name in the country as a producer and director with his brand Dharma Productions.
No director is independent.
I’m an actor’s director.
But I don’t think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director.
Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.
