A Film In Quotes

#1. As a result of my life on the road and the increasing number of rainy afternoons in cinemas, I began to get the idea that I might write a film.

Jeremy Lloyd

#2. I'm proud of Lord of the Rings. I think it's a once in a lifetime role, and a once in a lifetime film. It was made with so much care and passion and meticulous detail and everybody was so behind it.

Sean Bean

#3. I don't necessarily find superheroes in general, for me, that appealing. I'd much prefer to play, if I was to be cast in a superhero film, I'd prefer to play the villain because there's a reason, there's a motive behind their madness.

Ryan Kwanten

#4. We're losing film, especially in projection, we're losing a great achievement of civilization. A still image and darkness make up 50% of the experience. The still images become movement in your head. That's the magic of cinema.

Laszlo Nemes

#5. I'd love to do a film with Mariah. But it would have to be a comedy. She's the funniest woman in the world, she just cracks me up all the time.

Nick Cannon

#6. Give me a part in a film, and I'll show you I'm not just a heartthrob.

David Charvet

#7. I was imagining films in my head and trying to gather friends together to make movies since I was a kid. I tried to do comedy skits and a horror film.

Cary Fukunaga

#8. When the film was presented in New York, the distributor reproduced the fountain scene on a billboard as high as a skyscraper. My name was in the middle in huge letters, Fellini's was at the bottom, very tiny. Now the name of Fellini has become very great, mine very little.

Anita Ekberg

#9. I'm working on a film called 'Bonnie.' Bonnie means water. It's in English, and it's dealing with a future world in a megacity - which is what the U.N. says we're going to be - but in this megacity, a city that runs out of water.

Shekhar Kapur

#10. My first horror film was - well, I don't know. 'Bless the Child' is sort of genre, but 'May' was such a cult hit that after that, I just started getting offers for horror. I think I got a little bit pigeonholed in it right off of 'May' because there was just such a large response to that film.

Angela Bettis

#11. The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

Terry Pratchett

#12. To have a director that loves his actors is something that you can see in the film and in the fruits of that labor. You can see that translated in the film. When you watch such movie, you can see a director who loves his actors, and it shines through the movie, in my eyes.

Vin Diesel

#13. Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It's like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You'd just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke's sweaty face.

Jeremy Clarkson

#14. I agreed to film after my rookie year in Golden State. I was more used to cameras and felt that my journey to the NBA was a story worth sharing. Little did we know how much bigger the platform and documentary would become after Linsanity.

Jeremy Lin

#15. When I go out to direct a film, every day we prepare too much, we think too much. Knowledge becomes a weight upon wisdom. You know, simple words lost in the quicksand of experience.

Shekhar Kapur

#16. I used to follow celebrities, and I remember I watched Sanjay Dutt and Pooja Bhatt shooting for 'Sadak'. I was standing on the road at three in the night, but little did I know that I would be making a film with Sanjay at some point in my career.

Boman Irani

#17. It's bizarre, that feeling as an actor, at being in the mecca of the film world and seeing billboards for a TV show that you're in pretty much everywhere.

Joe Dempsie

#18. Good films are not made by accident, nor is good photography. You can have good things happen, on occasion, by accident that can be applied at that moment in a film, but your craft isn't structured around such things, except in beer commercials.

Gordon Willis

#19. One of the differences between HBO and other television is that they demand the same coverage that you would have in a feature film. We need to have all the shots in order to make it as rich and as stunning as it looks. We can't cut any corners.

Mark Addy

#20. To try something longer, I entered a half-hour radio drama contest with the national public broadcaster, CBC. To my surprise, I won. And that opened doors in film and television, because that broadcaster was looking to cultivate new Canadian talent, especially women who could write.

Karen Walton

#21. I think one of my favourite films is 'Dark Victory' with Bette Davis. Why? She was so wonderful in that film. And maybe I just want a good cry once in a while without having to go through a divorce.

Debbie Reynolds

#22. I made lots of movies while in school while everybody else was running around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish they'd give me some film."

George Lucas

#23. Ten years ago I was not heavily involved in the film world but on reflection it was a boom time with the mineral boom happening, so there was immense growth for industrial training films, documentaries to do with the mining, and the outback world.

Ann Macbeth

#24. Every film I make I feel like I am getting a mini-masters degree, it's a wonderful life path and you get to immerse yourself in an intriguing world for a couple of years.

Liz Garbus

#25. I was 28 when I played the role of a 65 year old man in my first film.

Anupam Kher

#26. When I did the film Generations, in which the character died, I felt like a guest for the first time. That made me very sad.

William Shatner

#27. When I'm introduced as a two-time Oscar winner, I'm happy that a film of mine has found an audience and some acclaim because that keeps me in business. A filmmaker's greatest concern is the ability to make future films, so it helps keep me in business.

Alexander Payne

#28. I like racing. I love the speed and I'm a very kinetic person in terms of filmmaking. I love the movement of film more than anything else.

George Lucas

#29. With me it started as a child, going to the theater and being totally transported but also walking out of the theater thinking I was the protagonist in the film and reenacting the scenes.

Oscar Torre

#30. Tina Fey is part of a generation of women who have changed the face of comedy at 'Second City,' 'SNL,' in sitcoms and in film.

Janeane Garofalo

#31. The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

Ellar Coltrane

#32. But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.

Kevin Spacey

#33. Because you make a world that didn't exist before, and you can go into that world deeper and deeper. It's unbounded out there. One film takes you into one area, another film takes you into another area. There could be trillions, zillions of worlds that exist in the big space.

David Lynch

#34. I get better roles in television. I'm not going to do a lesser role just to be in a feature film.

Jaclyn Smith

#35. If I was discovered by anyone, it would be Stephen O'Neil, who saw me in a play at Williamstown and introduced me to my team who I'm still with today. He was the first person to introduce me to the film and TV world. Other than that, I just assumed I would be a theater actor my whole life.

Logan Marshall-Green

#36. I'm not interested in a film about deceit anymore. I think I was always invested in deceit on some level. But it no longer compels me the way it did for so many years.

Ira Sachs

#37. We shot 'CBGB' in Savannah, and then I took another project there afterwards called 'Killing Winston Jones.' It's a dark comedy with Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover, Jon Heder, Danny Masterson and Aly Michalka. It's a great cast and a beautiful film.

Joel David Moore

#38. I was thrown in the deep end at 18 when I got cast in a movie that I didn't audition for. The director just sort of found me and put me in a film, so the decision was really made for me.

Teresa Palmer

#39. I'm not the kind of actress that goes home with the character. I mean, you're thinking about the work or the next day's scenes, but not staying in character. But as a film goes on, you become more and more fragile, emotionally. And physically too, actually.

Natasha Richardson

#40. I love the energy of an independent film set. No one is there for the money. Everyone is there 'cause they really want to be there. It makes all the difference in the world. It's without ego and agenda, other than just wanting to fulfill a creative dream.

Mamie Gummer

#41. The film medium is some sort of magic. I think also it's a magic that every frame comes and stands still for a fraction of a second and then it darkens. A half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic.

Ingmar Bergman

#42. But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses.

Steven Soderbergh

#43. Sometimes you're not always on or at your best, especially during auditions. So if you go in and you don't nail it, even if they're like, 'We don't need to see you again,' get a friend, get a video camera, and film you doing the stuff again.

Jack Huston

#44. I'm a private person too, and we don't ever film anything in our home because it's off limits. It's like letting people see your messy house.

Carrie Underwood

#45. In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer.

Terry Southern

#46. It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.

William Monahan

#47. Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology - looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

George Lucas

#48. When I was younger and in primary school, I'd do maybe a film a year, and I had to adapt to being away from everyone for a couple of months.

Saoirse Ronan

#49. I don't think there's room in video games for people to bring an ego. It's very frustrating for any actor to have someone who's a celebrity take over your place. Like the 'Uncharted' film, they're trying to find someone to play Nathan Drake. And it's like, why do they not think of us? We do this.

Nolan North

#50. When you do a voice in an animated film, you don't see the finished product at all. You're not animating. You're not doing the voice on the finished product. You're doing the voice long before.

Helen Mirren

#51. People outside the documentary world don't realize how time-consuming making a documentary film is there is a lot of responsibility, and in order to make something good you need time.

Alex Hammond

#52. 'Miracle at St. Anna.' I was challenged by Spike Lee. When he offered me the film, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'You start this film off and you end this film. I don't want a dry eye in the theatre. Can you pull that off?' He was dead serious.

Laz Alonso

#53. One might have thought that the most significant change in the film industry that would come about with a transition from the communist economy to capitalism would fundamentally concern the sources of funding.

Andrzej Wajda

#54. In a film called 'Senna,' the clue is in the title, and we have a Brazilian badge on our sleeve as we were making it. We were making it from Senna's point of view, with Senna narrating it.

Asif Kapadia

#55. What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to being a kid again, and we're all pretending in a room. Sometimes, when the pretending really works, I find it much, much more moving than something on film.

Mark Haddon

#56. I was absolutely obsessed with the Titanic - not the film, the actual boat. I'd draw diagrams about it and theorise that if it was built in a different way, it wouldn't have sunk.

Margot Robbie

#57. I just use all the skills that I learned in film school, and I just incorporate them into my sketches. People don't realize that, with a story, there has to be a beginning, middle and end. There has to be a problem and a resolution. Just because it's six seconds doesn't mean it's not a story.

King Bach

#58. I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

#59. I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first, I wanted to work in the theatre, but there was something about the ambience of film, especially American films, that always attracted me.

Jean Reno

#60. Everybody expects you to be qualified to talk about your films, but in a way, you're the least qualified person to talk about them. When you're finished, you don't watch them at all.

Danny Boyle

#61. The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

Mike Nichols

#62. I was always a writer - working on campaigns was never a profession for me. It was something I did on the side, really, so the trajectory hasn't been a political operative who likes to dabble in writing and finds himself into stumbling on film and TV - that was always my goal.

Beau Willimon

#63. I'd rather be appreciated for my character in a film than my looks.

Esha Gupta

#64. 'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.

Lenny Abrahamson

#65. I have great respect for the FBI, and I know that there have been some rumors lately that the FBI was disenchanted because of what we were doing in story, or doing a certain take: that's not true. Actually the FBI was tremendously enthusiastic about us doing [ J. Edgar Hoover ] film.

Clint Eastwood

#66. My pictures are not really about the children that I photograph. They're more like actors in a film. I think you can always recognize the children, but they are alienated from their real appearance and become more like metaphors.

Loretta Lux

#67. It might kill you to say it, because the film really takes on the Catholic Church, but I do think there is a sort of affection for certain rituals, and an authenticity to the presentation of those rituals, in 'Mea Maxima Culpa.'

Alex Gibney

#68. I'm just attracted to good material and great characters and that can come in any form, whether it's television or film or a theatre piece.

Laurie Holden

#69. I just want to be with great teachers. If that means I'm in a horror film with good teachers, I'll do another horror film. But I would love to branch out and do more comedy or just more straight dramas.

Jennifer Carpenter

#70. After working on 'Europa,' I found it incredibly freeing to speak English in a film, so it kind of sparked an interest in me as an artist to improve my acting.

Daniel Wu

#71. I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film.

Mary Ellen Mark

#72. You know, this is such a rich time that we've just been involved in, and there's really a job now for historians. Film is still very young. This is the first hundred years of filmmaking. So I think it's important that we have some sense of history and continuity. Especially in film.

Dennis Hopper

#73. With a film, things constantly have to go up in the story, and you're constantly putting pressure on the main character. It allows to go really deep into what its relationship is.

Jennifer Lee

#74. Ninety percent of films are pretty mediocre, but they have a built-in audience and open on 3,000 screens.

George Clooney

#75. My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.

Tatiana Maslany

#76. If you're playing a cop in a modern film, you don't have to walk with your spine straight up and bow before a fight. There's a lot of free form of expressing yourself as an actor.

Donnie Yen

#77. I was interested in theatre and media and came to Mumbai to get a job. I imagined that the film industry would be a white building with producers sitting in different rooms, and you could walk in and meet them, and they would interview you and select you.

Imtiaz Ali

#78. I must say, in the case of "Room," both the book and the film, I don't think being a lesbian author held me back at all.

Emma Donoghue

#79. Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells ...

Shannon Celebi

#80. I use the Philip Kingsley range of shampoos, and they've got a great elasticiser, which is fantastic. I wrap my hair in cling film and put that on.

Cate Blanchett

#81. I'm the only Mauritanian filmmaker so it wouldn't make sense to make a film in France. I could shoot outside of my own country if the story was something that called for it. Africa really has to be the reason for me to make a new film.

Abderrahmane Sissako

#82. I feel like I'm a trendsetter. I try to always stay on the edge of everything I do, whether it be music, fashion, film. I just like to stay abreast of what's going on. What's going on in the street and what's going on in the hood I put in my music and I feel like a lot of people follow that.

Gucci Mane

#83. I'd like to do a film in Canada, but it's too difficult. National Film Board funding takes too long, and there's too much paperwork; by the time the film is approved the topic is dead and gone.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

#84. I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Minnie Driver

#85. My first time playing a main character was in 'Seventeen Years.' It was directed by famous Sixth Generation director Zhang Yuan, but it wasn't a large commercial film.

Li Bingbing

#86. I would say, while I think audiences are savvy enough, I think that the effects work in the teaser is quite a bit more than presentable. I think they look good and representative of the film. The harder thing with the teaser, interestingly enough is, how much to show.

Shawn Anthony Levy

#87. You just have to have the right gear and a few people to put you in motion with a good aesthetic and the film will take care of itself.

Andrew Wight

#88. I think that music and art and film, at their best, can connect with something that is eternal in human beings, that might not have so many labels on it, something that's ultimately universal and that may just be a feeling.

Tunde Adebimpe

#89. I'd love to continue my career in Hollywood - I'd love to do another action film, or a romantic comedy, or horror. I love horror films.

Rain

#90. I just get so fed up with seeing the same things written about me. If I see the words 'ice queen' attached to me, I feel like banging my head against the wall. There's this perception that I can only be in a film if I have a glass of champagne in my hand and a stately home in the background.

Kristin Scott Thomas

#91. I'm interested in making films of all sizes. During this time I've made a film called 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas', which is a modest-sized film. I was involved in 'I Am Legend' and 'Yes, Man', but 'Potter' is unique. There'll never be anything like 'Potter' again.

David Heyman

#92. Yes, the Bechdel Test. It's named for Allison Bechdel, who is a comic book creator. The test is, are there two named women in the film? Do they talk to each other? And is it about something other than a man? I actually think the Bechdel Test is a little advanced for us sometimes.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

#93. Wes Craven is obviously a horror film icon so I was definitely very interested in bringing something back to life that Wes had created.

Aaron Stanford

#94. I have a feeling he felt Jon Voight had run away with the film, which he didn't, though he was brilliant in it, in a much less easy part. I just don't know what had got into him, but something had.

John Schlesinger

#95. My first film was a movie shot in 1974. I was 18 on that movie set. It was called 'Big Bad Mama.' I turned 19 on the next movie I worked on, which was a black 'Blazing Saddles.' I worked in the art department. It was called 'Darktown Strutters.'

Bill Paxton

#96. A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she'll appear in film and it won't work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don't know.

Oliver Stone

#97. I'm not as successful as Pixar or Dreamworks, and that is disappointing to me, because I think my films are as valid as a Pixar film. I think there's an audience for my films. I know there's a market for someone like Quentin Tarantino, who basically does adult cartoons in live action.

Bill Plympton

#98. I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.

Martin Scorsese

#99. When you ask a bunch of people to see a film, and then invite them to comment on it and tell them it's a work-in-progress, they feel bound to offer an opinion.

Andrew Dominik

#100. It's hard to imagine anyone interested in film not being a fan of Alfred Hitchcock because he's such a key influence on the entire history of cinema - it's hard to escape his shadow.

Toby Jones