Top 77 Patty Jenkins Quotes

I never want to set a belief that a woman has to direct a woman’s film, meaning she can’t direct a man’s film. If only films can be directed by people who are exactly the same as that, it’s only gonna limit all of the women more.

I grew up very inspired by ‘Superman One’ and by kind of the promise of the genre of what a superhero origin story can do.

I was a closet Journey fan when I was growing up.

I grew up in a bit of a feminist fantasy with a single mom. I was totally shielded, in a way, from an idea that I couldn’t do something.

When I’m on a movie, I’m unavailable every day for a year and a half. You can’t do that with a little baby. Somebody might be able to do it, but not me.

De Niro didn’t gain all that weight to play Jake La Motta just to prove he could get fat – every single one of those transformative things is grounded in the character.

I know that a man’s version of a tough woman is very different from a woman’s version.

Just look at Gal Gadot when she smiles or when she meets somebody and shakes their hand. That is the embodiment of Wonder Woman. She is so beautiful and powerful, but kind and generous and thoughtful. She’s just an amazing person.

It’s been my experience with damaged people: they don’t wake up every day and wallow in the bad things that have happened to them.

I grew up in a family of fighter pilots, and I have a real kindred spirit to that kind of fast-moving aggression and momentum.

It is ironic you could make an animated film about a dog that’s a universal character, but God forbid it be a human being who is not a man.

It’s like there’s something very maternal about Wonder Woman: when push comes to shove, if nobody else wants to do it, Wonder Woman would step up and take care of business. But she doesn’t want to do it, and she would never take any delight in it. That’s Wonder Woman to me.

My father wanted to be a hero. He went to the Air Force Academy, was valedictorian, and then he found himself strafing villagers in Vietnam in a war he didn’t want to be in and didn’t understand. He was extremely conflicted about the line where he went from being the good guy to possibly being the bad guy.

Being the person who gets to make a movie about Wonder Woman, of course, I take that incredibly seriously. I am a huge Wonder Woman fan, and the aspiration comes totally naturally to me.

I’m making a movie about Wonder Woman, who I love, who to me is one of the great superheroes, so I just treated her like a universal character, and that’s what I think is the next step when I think you can do that more and more and when studios have the confidence to do that more and more.

When I made ‘Monster,’ I didn’t think about it being about a woman. I didn’t think about that she was a lesbian. I was telling a story about a specific person who was tragic and looking for love in the world, and the more I could make her you, the more of a victory.

If a film is based on a true story and you don’t use anyone’s name, you can do what you like.

TV is really hard to break into. This may be the worst piece of advice, but make an independent film. TV oftentimes takes people who are established. The great benefit of not breaking in yet is purity of voice.

I have a real pet peeve for women who play damaged characters but don’t look damaged.

As soon as I went to painting school in New York, I took an experimental film course, and everything clicked and came together. I realized my love of music and drama and the visual arts all came together.

Strangely, I have a huge aversion to movies that try to teach healthy people an abusive lesson about the darkness in the world.

I have a high bar for myself already; I always want to do something beautiful and meaningful.

I don’t think I focused on the financial part of it, but definitely, my ambition is to be great, and that always meant that the sky was the limit for what I was hoping to do.

I’ve been influenced by a lot of films. And a lot of them are the typical interesting, artsy films. But I haven’t talked enough about how there are those few big blockbusters that really rock your world.

Frankly, I like DVDs having lots of things on it, but I have issues with it as well, too.

My father was a fighter pilot, so I moved around the world when I was young. Then I ended up in Kansas.

New kinds of heroics need to be celebrated – like love, thoughtfulness, forgiveness, diplomacy – or we’re not going to get there.

To make a masterpiece would be my life’s dream.

It’s not easy to be a hero. You do it because of what you believe, not because of what other people deserve.

I had an interesting moment with ‘Wonder Woman’ where, when I first thought about doing ‘Wonder Woman 2,’ I thought, ‘Well, these are so intense, making these movies. It’s a lot to think about doing more.’ But then I had an epiphany, and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s not more – it’s better.’

I was aware that I was the first person of all time getting to direct a Wonder Woman film, and that was taken very seriously.

I am super-comfortable with powerful women.

I love that duality of Wonder Woman: that she both wants peace and means peace, but when push comes to shove and someone needs to be put down like a dog, that’s what she would be willing to do.

I think that what Wonder Woman stands for is gorgeous and incredible.

I think you need to have a strong vision of your own.

I always say that ‘Star Wars’ had a huge effect on me, too, but what ‘Star Wars’ did for some people, ‘Superman’ did for me.

At the end of the day, making ‘Monster’ was unbelievably hard, as making any movie is. And the only thing that made it worth it is not those awards and all those kind of things that I can barely remember because I was so overwhelmed. It was really that night in the editing room, that day on set. It was those things.

I can’t take on the history of 50 percent of the population just because I’m a woman.

I like to work, and I worked for years as a camera person before I directed.

I do care about success and all of those things. But I don’t care enough to do movies just for that reason.

As soon as I went to painting school in New York, I took an experimental film course, and everything clicked and came together. I realized my love of music and drama and the visual arts all came together. This happened in 1989. Since then, it’s been a long road of educating myself in every possible way.

I have more information than anybody’s ever had about this case. I have 7,000 letters from Aileen Wuornos and all the letters between her and her girlfriend.

Making a movie is such a huge commitment of emotion and time that I didn’t want to be beholden to doing it for money.

To me, superhero movies are like Greek myth.

My fantasy is that I could wake up looking amazing, that I could be strong and stop the bully, but that everybody would love me, too. I think that’s intrinsic to fantasy – fantasy is fantasy.

I don’t think I could have made a good movie out of ‘Thor 2’ because I wasn’t the right director. And I don’t think I would have been in the running for ‘Wonder Woman’ as a result. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m glad I didn’t do it.

To be a director, you need to be reliable, on time, confident, calm, all of those things you see demonstrated in the military.

There are a lot of pretty actresses in Hollywood who try to act tough, and the audience laughs.

It’s not palm trees and neon signs in Florida; it’s strip malls, highways, hot sun beating down on you.

If you look at the history of Wonder Woman, you look at the iconography, the images that have kept her alive – they’re not dark. The thing I think is so important to always keep in mind about her is how positive and bright and shiny she is – very much in the same way that Superman has been.

I’ve had tragedy in my life, and it doesn’t stop comedy, so I think it’s important to do both. Particularly in a superhero movie, but in any movie that accesses all people. Nobody wants to be abused for two hours.

There’s the 7-year-old me that pretended to be Wonder Woman running around the schoolyard. Like, what an incredible thing to imagine that when the bully shows up or the villain, you would be strong enough to do something about it. But, also, you look like Lynda Carter while you’re doing it – like, ‘Oh, my God.’

If you want more diversity in the industry, you need diverse people writing scripts and developing them.

I did not necessarily feel that Hollywood was interested in what I wanted to do. They wanted me to do what they wanted to do.

The thing about ‘Wonder Woman,’ which is very feminine and definitely different, is that her objective is to bring love and truth to mankind.

Who should make a great movie about Wonder Woman? It should be somebody who loves Wonder Woman. And I know that I’m that. So let’s go and try.

A woman doesn’t have to direct a woman’s film and a man doesn’t have to direct a man’s film; otherwise, where would we be?

I don’t love all superhero films, but I love a great one.

Any sympathy won for Aileen Wuornos based on a lie is not sympathy at all. The question is, can we have sympathy for the circumstances of someone’s life? That’s what I was interested in.