Top 100 Director Quotes
#1. No one appears on our stage unless the director has placed them there for our benefit
Paramahansa Yogananda
#2. Well, I wasn't just kind of standing in a queue at McDonald's and someone sat down and said, 'You're the director of a $100 million Hollywood movie.' I've been working in commercials for ten years.
Rupert Sanders
#3. Lyrical lecture, word architecture,
Rap director, the best in my sector.
Microphone cool chief, releasin the smooth speech ...
I get nasty with a pen and some loose leaf.
Lord Finesse
#4. I became a director just for the love of movies, because of the power of cinema.
Antoine Fuqua
#5. At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.
Stephen Daldry
#6. The thing about movies is if somebody has an idea that works, it's in, and I say that as a screenwriter as well as a director.
William Monahan
#7. After I completed the project for BCG, I was offered the position of Director of Marketing for Ozon.ru.
Maelle Gavet
#8. What you realize is that a lot of actors want to be directed. They're there to do the best job they can for the director. They have a lot of questions, and your job is to have answers.
Jon Turteltaub
#9. I'm not a famous director yet, and I'm not into fame. I like to just work. As a director, as an actor, whatever people consider me is fine with me.
Tommy Wiseau
#11. I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.
Francis Ford Coppola
#12. I was a VP of marketing, I was regional sales manager in fashion, and marketing director in communications and product development. I was always a corporate Fortune 500 girl.
Patti Stanger
#13. Being a director, just to begin with, is just, I think, one of the hardest jobs just because you have to work in every way. You have to work with actors, you have to be involved with the producers and the writing and the action. Every department comes to you; you have to deal with everything.
Agnes Bruckner
#14. I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever.
John Waters
#15. I have a side of me that doesn't care. I really enjoy physical comedy, thinking of an idea and pitching it to the director.
Isla Fisher
#16. Although the Academy prefers their Best Pictures grounded in realism, not fantasy, Lee's 'Life of Pi' win proved that the voters understand and appreciate the qualities a visionary director needs to create an otherworldly adventure.
Richard Corliss
#17. He dreamed of being director of the FBI instead of attorney general. Considering some of the unsavory characters who had held the latter post, Milo didn't have the credentials for it.
Dean Koontz
#18. As a first-time director, you act a lot like a teenager. I made decisions because I was hotheaded. My skin broke out. I was trying to understand who I am.
Gia Coppola
#19. As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.
Chadwick Boseman
#20. David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet.
Tom Hardy
#21. Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem.
Tom Stoppard
#22. When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.
Ian McKellen
#23. In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.
Ian McKellen
#24. The most amazing thing you can ask for as an actor from a director is that you're being seen, that the choices made are informed.
Bertie Carvel
#25. I think every director's different. Every director's got his own style. I mean, when I directed, I basically just screamed for eight hours a day, twelve hours a day.
Michael Biehn
#26. My father was a television director, and I always knew I wanted to be in the industry, but I had thought my role was behind the camera as opposed to in front.
Philip Glenister
#27. As a director, or just a film fan who wants to enjoy the festival, Cannes is the worst place to be. But it must be a paradise for distributors and importers.
Bong Joon-ho
#28. When it came to the on-camera TV stuff, I'd be standing next to the director, my friend, and he'd be asked a question that I should have been answering.
Robert B. Weide
#29. Adrian Lyne is such an incredible director.
Chad Lowe
#30. I was on a couple of scholarships. I had a job in the school administrative office. I had a job as a hat-check boy in a restaurant. I had another job as an assistant to a casting director. It took a lot to get myself enough money to put myself through Juilliard.
Kevin Spacey
#31. I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.
Abbas Kiarostami
#32. I had to get a job, and of course, the job was 'The Godfather.' That made me be something I didn't know I was going to be. I became a big-shot director.
Francis Ford Coppola
#33. Out of nowhere, I became a fairly well-known director with a penchant for opera, which I did for 10 years. Then I realized I was taking myself out the theater channel, and so I re-focused on theater.
Jack O'Brien
#34. It will be hard work. It's always hard work, and hard work from everybody within the team - technical director, mechanics, drivers, engineers - everyone in the team.
David Leslie
#35. I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.
Dave McKean
#36. You have great athletic directors, you let them run it; you keep yourself informed, but I'm not the athletic director. I'm the president of the university.
Gordon Gee
#37. The star of 'Narcos' and the director and creator of 'Narcos' are both Brazilian superstars. So Brazil has received 'Narcos' particularly well as it's been well-received around the world.
Ted Sarandos
#38. I wanted to know as the director how the actors wanted to tell this story I wanted to know what they thought.
Paul Bettany
#39. I don't really care where I work, actually, because you know making a movie is like living in movie world. There's such a secluded world, and the director is the king ruling the country, and everybody's building this little town to speak in symbolism.
Franka Potente
#40. I have been very influenced by the director Maurice Pialat, who I continue to be in conversation and conflict with and get inspiration from.
Ira Sachs
#41. The thing is, I think as a director or a writer or whatever, you have to have a vision. And you have to be maybe sometimes too early, somewhere.
Uwe Boll
#42. If there is one thing that, as a director, you don't want to be a part of, it's a group. It's the same thing with music. I don't want to be a part of a scene. Just leave me alone. It's just my nature, and it's nothing against the people that are in that group, but I just like to be left alone.
Rob Zombie
#43. From the director's point of view, it's infinitely easier to do violence than to do a good dramatic scene.
George Cukor
#44. In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.
Paul Greengrass
#45. David Anspaugh, who was my first director, on 'Rudy,' was all about empowering the actor, making you feel comfortable and appreciated, allowing you to keep your dignity, and treating you like a man. Being treated like a grown-up makes you proud to be involved in a film.
Jon Favreau
#46. I'd worked in Clockwork Orange with Stanley Kubrick and since Stanley was such a prestigious director this opened all sorts of doors for me - one of them being Star Wars.
David Prowse
#47. I never went to school for directing. I studied theater with a director. I followed plays to see how a director would talk to the actors. I tried to make my own school.
Denis Villeneuve
#48. I think you have to have different tools for each job - you know producer is very different from a director and very different from an actor.
Renee O'Connor
#49. I've turned down jobs because I've said, 'Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.'
David Duchovny
#50. My taste in the films I've taken as an actor is similar to what I'd do a director or writer: all quite odd, challenging stuff, slightly off-the-wall.
Daniel Radcliffe
#51. I'm not interested in making movies only with female protagonists. I think it's ridiculous to think that a female director can't direct men. That makes no sense to me.
Elizabeth Banks
#52. I believe that every director's films reflect their lifestyle.
Takashi Miike
#54. A great opera house isn't run by a director, but by a great administrator.
Steven Berkoff
#55. Sometimes you can't even find the director on a movie set. Sometimes you don't want to find the director on a movie set.
Stanley Tucci
#56. At the end of the day, you're handing your performance over. If a director says after a take, 'You know what, try it just really angry. Just get furious' ... you're like, 'Well, I don't know if I want to give you that because I don't know if I trust what you're going to do with it.'
Chris Evans
#57. 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.
Antonio Banderas
#58. I think we can fairly conclude that writer-director Joss Whedon didn't make 'The Avengers' for me.
Steve Erickson
#59. Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved.
Anne Dudley
#60. When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
John Irving
#61. To the audience it doesn't really matter how much the director struggled with an actor. It's the result that counts.
Roman Polanski
#62. I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.
Marion Cotillard
#63. I sign on to any project because of the director: because they won't change, and you've got to feel confident that you're in good hands, in their vision.
Sam Worthington
#64. I would like, in the long term, to be recognized as a writer-director-actor.
Corey Feldman
#65. The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.
Amber Benson
#66. Any director who comes into a revival owes a great deal to the original director. If I know the backbone works, it gives me, as a director, much more freedom to bring something new to it or try something different.
Scott Ellis
#67. I didn't make 'Wild Bill' because I wanted to become a director; I just wanted to make 'Wild Bill.'
Dexter Fletcher
#68. A good [film] director is talented, imaginative, and does his homework.
Vilmos Zsigmond
#69. It didn't matter that Charlie Chaplin may not have been a great director or a great anything else. He made great movies.
Jon Landau
#70. I studied physical therapy, and I started to study theater because my aunt is a theater director.
Miguel Angel Silvestre
#71. The 'transition' involves the transfer of power from one president to another. In recent times, the incoming President has designated a Director of the Transition, a team leader, to oversee and administer the orderly transfer of power.
Richard V. Allen
#72. The truth of the matter is this - I never look for films specifically, because ultimately if the fundamentals of the character and the script and the director aren't there, it makes it a moot point.
Leonardo DiCaprio
#73. I depend on good editors and a good director.
Indira Varma
#74. I have my pride. I'm a director. I'm not going to go and recreate some other director's vision.
Fede Alvarez
#75. I'm not a director to make an action or horror film. That's not for me.
Jason Alexander
#76. There really isn't a dream role, but there's a dream situation where I could work with a director that I idolize. So, the idea of working with David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson or Scorsese or Spielberg or any of the guys I really idolize is a dream for me.
Logan Lerman
#77. As an author, you hope for a director and a cast that will make something wonderful out of your book.
Bernhard Schlink
#78. No director directs 'Game of Thrones' without reading all the episodes and knowing what's going on. All the episodes are written in advance, so you can do that, which is an important point.
Alex Graves
#79. After I directed for the first time, I wanted to call every director I'd ever worked with and apologize. In television you are tasked with shooting 42 minutes, or whatever, in eight days. That's not a lot of time.
Michelle MacLaren
#80. I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it ... Then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden, all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax, and I'm doing what I do, and I'm not even thinking about it.
Jack Nicholson
#81. Snoop Scorsese, that's my director name.
Snoop Dogg
#82. For a director, a musical is a special kind of hell.
Mike Nichols
#84. It was not my class of people. There was not a producer, a press agent, a director, an actor.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
#85. I was shooting a mini-series for Sundance/BBC, called 'Top of the Lake,' that was shot by Jane Campion, who's a beautiful native New Zealander and famous film director. The role I was playing was very intense, and they shaved half my hair off. So, I looked like this post-apocalyptic character.
Jay Ryan
#86. Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.
Robert Lopez
#87. I'm a writer and director. And the movie I've seen a million times is 'Coming Home,' directed by Hal Ashby and starring Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern.
Jonathan Levine
#88. I'm an actress who likes a strong, communicative director.
Kristin Davis
#89. I have a lot of musician friends. I worked in radio as a music director, and I know everybody hears about the George Straits and the Garth Brooks and the Kenny Chesneys and all that, but for every major star, there are thousands who didn't quite make it.
Robert David Hall
#90. My philosophy is that to be a director you cannot be subject to anyone, even the head of the studio. I threatened to quit each time I didn't get my way, but no one ever let me walk out.
Dorothy Arzner
#91. Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.
Michael Shannon
#92. The Screen Directors Guild was organized solely by and for the motion picture director ... We are not anti-anything: The Guild being formed for the purpose of assisting and improving the director's work in the form of a collective body, rather than as an individual, as was necessary in the past.
King Vidor
#94. The last thing a director needs is an actress who feels an ownership towards a particular character.
Romola Garai
#95. I still feel lucky whenever I hear a director say, "Action!" Because then I think, "Whoa, I'm really in the movies. This is a real thing happening." I've never not been enthralled by that. I still love it. I still love hearing it, and I feel really lucky all the time.
Fred Armisen
#96. Senator Ted Kennedy said with regards to MK-ULTRA that "the Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an 'extensive testing and experimentation' program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens
Todd A. Thies
#98. I am Hollywood's hottest young, middle-aged director, but I'll write out of New York because I don't want to become a salad head. That's what you become out there: a guacamole dip.
Michael O'Donoghue
#99. I recognize the amount of time that it takes as a director. I made the choice to stop taking roles outside of L.A. because I didn't want to miss any of my child's life.
Regina King
#100. From my experience as an actor, choreographer, action director, and producer, I understand the elements and the dynamics of being a film maker.
Donnie Yen
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