Playwrights are the most gregarious writers – to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set designers.
The great thing about having spent all this time on film sets is that I’ve been able to watch directors and how they work. I now know that this is what I want to do as well: to tell stories visually. But it’s definitely my vision that I want to put across, nobody else’s.
I’m one of the lucky directors that pretty much every movie I’ve done has started a franchise. But I never think this way. I think that’s the way you break it, if you go, ‘then at the end, at the end we’ll see you later.’ I was forced to do it in ‘Clash of the Titans.’
I wanted to just surround myself with people who I think are better than I am, whether they’re actors or directors or producers, so that I could learn from them.
My husband John Thaw worked with many directors, some of whom cut their teeth working on the ‘Sweeney,’ ‘Kavanagh QC’ and ‘Morse’ before going on to illustrious careers.
I’ve worked with so few female directors.
When I was starting out I was way too scared to ask real directors how to do it or ask for advice, I’m really kind of New Zealand like that.
I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I’m making a film. I’m chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.
I’ve run into some S.O.B. directors, but I gave them back as good as I got.
I love working with new directors. There’s so much drive and effort. It still comes down to the character for me, but if it’s a character I really want to play, I would never not do the project because of a new director.
For me, to be in a place where I’m on the ‘favourite’ list of top directors I like, that’s being number one. There is no other definition to me. It’s not money; it’s not how many songs you’re seen in or how many clothes you’re changing in the film.
All the jobs I’ve gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I’ve done – indie films, plays, short student films, TV – since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen.
The kind of stories I like often comes from debutant directors.
But it’s cool working with female directors because I’m a girl, so you do relate to them more. You can talk to them about other stuff like clothes and all that.
I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.
The popular image that Hollywood is ruined by difficult prima donna actors is nonsense. They’re certainly very nice to directors. I can’t say the same about producers, who I found difficult, paranoid, and certifiably insane, mostly.
Directors who turn into big babies and shut out criticism stop learning.
You don’t usually meet directors on the streets.
Now that I’m taking some time off from school, I’ve been reading a lot to make sure I don’t forget everything. It’s mostly classics and nonfiction accounts from actors, directors and writers from the ’40s and ’50s.
Some people are directors and I think they should stay behind the camera.
Gotta watch out for directors.
In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in ‘The Crucible’ and Nina in ‘The Seagull,’ and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That’s what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don’t think I have a very modern-looking face.
Michael Winterbottom is one of the great directors of this century.
You have to remind casting directors out here that you don’t just do one thing. There’s a lot of people who do just one thing.
It is absolutely my conviction, that Walter Salles will figure among the great directors of our time.
Over the years, I’ve learnt from co-actors, directors, technicians, and even from junior artists.
I’d like to produce. I’d like to come up with ideas and collaborate with people and directors and writers that I like, be a part of movies that have the same idea that the movies that impacted me have. I’d like to be able to do that for people.
My big break was becoming the spokesperson for Texas Instruments. Casting directors really started giving me a chance to read for projects.
I think Star Trek has been very double-edged for all of us – as actors, writers, directors.
I have worked with some very great directors.
Bad directors will tell you they absolutely know how to do it, and how it has to happen; there’s this insecurity that leads them to feeling like they have to control everything.
I deal with guys in their 20s and early 30s who are presidents of companies, who are movie directors.
Directors say that you should get actors before they are recognized. They will be a pain or have an opinion.
We definitely have to support other female directors because there’s not enough of us.
I have a hard time articulating the emotional experience of working on a film. Even when I have meetings on films or discussing them with directors, I find that’s my biggest challenge. Different words mean different things to people.
I want to support other women because of the opportunities I’ve had – and I’ve had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.
I have very talented art directors in my agency who start out telling me, ‘Well, this is what the picture is… ‘ I ask, ‘Well, what’s the headline?’ and they say, ‘We haven’t done that yet, but it looks this way.’ But I’m still writing copy, almost every day.
You can’t reinvent the wheel. I remember when we first started out at ‘Late Night,’ we were trying to hire directors, and this guy was like, ‘I see you behind a glass desk.’ I don’t. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, the glass desk.’ I go, ‘I don’t really see me as a glass desk guy.’
Sometimes I call directors. Sometimes I just meet with them. It just happens. It’s not that I’m pushy. It comes naturally. But I go ahead. I don’t stay in my armchair, waiting for the phone to ring.
I can’t stand directors who try to micro-manage everything. When it happens these days I just walk off set, saying if they don’t like the way I’m doing it they can get someone else.
I watch movies all the time, so it’s hard to pick certain specific directors that have inspired me in the aggregate.
Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies – they’re the only ones who can make a true buck.
I’ve constantly done my best to get the best material I can get with the best directors I can get to direct me.
Really, what I’m doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.
There are two types of directors: the directors who take and directors who give.
I don’t want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involved in this industry – directors and producers – are trying to make their games more like movies. They are longing to make movies rather than making videogames.
Overseas directors who want to work in Hollywood, the language barrier is not a problem. With the right talent, any director can be successful.
Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I’d give it my best shot.
Directors, like actors, get typecast. And because I’ve had great success with comedy and horror and TV shows, that’s basically what I’m kind of offered.
To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.
Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.
Male directors always project their own desire of women – how they want a woman to dress, to do her hair. With a woman director, it’s more a projection of herself.
I think the three Mexican directors that came before me did a very good job in Hollywood because they came in and started directing things like ‘Harry Potter.’
I’ve always loved music videos – I used to make my own for bands like Pearl Jam. My favorite directors are Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Patrick Daughters.
There are directors who, their direction is high, but then when you challenge it, it crumbles. They can’t back up what they’re asking.
Directors have to push me. I have to be pushed up. Not all the time, but often.
Good directors don’t answer questions with their work. They generate debate and create discussion.
I never made the movies for the critics; I’ve done the best I could with the material and the directors and the actors I had. But the thing that’s really exciting is that once I do that one project that’s different, that stands out, everyone’s gonna be watching.
I think comedy directors tend to feel a need to justify the bad behavior, and I just never think that. I like bad behavior, I’ve always liked bad behavior, I’m a fan of bad behavior, and I don’t think you have to justify bad behavior.
