Top 60 Lee Daniels Quotes

I’m not Tyler Perry. I’m not Dino De Laurentis. I think it’s a bit much to put one’s name in front of the film. It makes me uncomfortable.

Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in.

I believe in life that you know that everything prepares you for the next thing – whether it’s a hit, whether it’s not a hit, whether it’s a… your failures are your accomplishments because it makes you prepared for whatever it is that you are going to do next.

People enjoy making fun of people who are famous; they love putting people down.

‘Shadowboxer’ was based on my life.

I’m not really vegan. I’m vegan-ish. I have a piece of lamb every now and then.

What attracts me to material are characters that I know – characters that I know people don’t know but I know – and bringing them to the screen. Spotlighting voices that have not been heard before on screen.

I like to show the grey area in all my characters.

I definitely caught the acting bug, but that lasted for about two seconds when I found my way to L.A. and found that my talents were better suited behind the cameras.

I think the father-son love story is a universal one which transcends color.

America is fickle. You never know what they’re going to go for.

I had ‘Push’ and ‘The Paperboy’ next to my bed for many years. Those are some of the great, great novels.

I’m always workin’, man. I gotta pay the light bills.

I don’t know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people.

My dad was a cop. My mom worked at various jobs – she worked as a homemaker, a bank teller, a bartender.

I was the oldest of five children, each about a year apart, and my mother, bless her heart, had her hands full.

To come into my world, I’ve got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I’m asking you to move furniture. We’re making a movie. We’re making it like we’re putting on a play.

The rules are: The only ego is the film, and you have to serve the film.

I’m always more comfortable and in a good place when I’m with friends because I know they trust me. I’m able to get great performances from people who trust me.

I think it’s very important that we don’t sound like militants. Often what we do is we give a comment, and because it comes across with passion, then we’re ‘angry black people.’

I hate white people writing for black people; it’s so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices.

I moved on to a nursing agency as a receptionist just to get a job, and ended up managing it, which led to me opening my own – say your mom is sick and needs someone to help her, then you call something like what I had: a home health agency.

My mom had five kids. And she came home after working three jobs, and I’d rub her feet. We’d all rub her feet. We were lucky to get any time with her.

I was always intrigued with European cinema, and hated most American cinema. I didn’t like the one, two, three – boom! style, with a neat and tidy ending. That was never my scene.

Here’s the thing: I think the media underestimates the intelligence of the moviegoer. We need to be fulfilled. People want to sit down and think, and I try to make people think.

At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving.

I am so used to having two faces. A face that I had for black America and a face for white America. When Obama became president, I lost both faces. Now I only have one face.

My mom knew early on that I was gay, and she knew that I had to get out of the ghetto.

I come from a family of domestics. I think most African-Americans of my age do. They were trusted by their bosses. I have met so many white people that spent more time with their nannies than they have with their own parents.

I want to see movies I can walk away from and say, ‘Wait, what happened there? Hold up, what did I just see? What?’ and then it connects to something that you personally, unequivocally know to be truth.

That’s the gift ‘Precious’ has given me. You really think you’re telling a story about a fat black girl, and only fat black girls will understand it, and then you realize we’re all Precious.

I see the world from a very specific perspective. It is how I grew up. It is what I am proud of, and I vocalize it. And for those who have not experienced my experience, it is odd, and it’s not mainstream.

I’ve never done a studio movie, let alone worked for a network. Every one of my films has been independently financed.

I don’t want to sell my soul to Hollywood – to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.

I don’t work with fear, and I don’t work with actors that are fearful.

I didn’t have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.

Every African-American I know has two faces. There’s the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.

Stars make money on real movies. They make big money on real movies. To come into my world, I’ve got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I’m asking you to move furniture.

I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.

In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans.

When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar.

I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world.

I’m a filmmaker. I’m always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we’re making people think.

I don’t know whether everybody likes the films that I do. I know that I love them, and I believe the way that I raise my kids that they will love them, and that’s what most important to me.

Some of my friends don’t have a cell phone. Patti LaBelle doesn’t have a cell phone.

Theater was always in the backdrop. Nursing was a way to pay the bills. I wasn’t a nurse; I had a nursing agency.

Some of the most provocative TV that I’m inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can’t do it.

I think this last film I finished, ‘The Butler,’ is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire.

My partner, Danny Strong, came to me with this idea of telling a story about my life and merging that with music and the hip-hop world. He wrote ‘The Butler’ and originally wanted to do ‘Empire’ also as a movie.

Putting on a movie is like going to war – for me, at least. It’s all about time; time is money, and we don’t have it. So it’s all about getting to know each other intimately quickly. You are with family members that you like or don’t like, but you can’t leave them because you’re stuck with them.

I drank from colored water fountains and from the white water fountain just to see what it was like when I was a kid. What shocks me is that these kids today don’t realize that this happened in many of our lifetimes.

It’s hard for me to accept love. I wish I could lie to you and tell you that it’s easy for me, but it’s not.

While I am not a musician, I love music. I have over 15,000 songs on my iPod. Everything from hard core rap to the soundtrack from the original ‘Cinderella.’

I knew that I’d end up directing because I’m so hands-on with my films.

I had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don’t understand why you’re being bullied, so you just suppress it.

I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.

I don’t know – I haven’t seen any of my movies after I finish them. I leave the editing room; I don’t go back.

When people don’t like the film, I can take a bullet. I don’t mind you talking about me, but I’m protective of my actors, because they bared their soul for me.

The ratings board is completely different when it comes to film versus the television arena.

I went back-to-back from ‘Paperboy’ to ‘Butler,’ literally with no break.