Top 100 Great Director Quotes
#1. Working with a great director is like getting a master class in acting.
Swoosie Kurtz
#2. You can have a great script, or a great director and a bad script, and get a great movie. Nothing really guarantees anything.
Douglas Booth
#3. Peter Jackson is a wonderful man. He's a great director. He's found his niche in life.
Luke Evans
#4. Sometimes a great director will do a bad job and an okay director will do a great job. You never know.
Ronald Meyer
#5. If you have a script that's not great, if you have a great director, you can make a great movie, but if you have a great script with a director who's not good, never are you going to have a good movie.
Monica Bellucci
#6. If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.
Akira Kurosawa
#7. Classics stay alive because a great actor or a great director wants to do them.
Scott Rudin
#8. I'd rather have one good scene in a movie by a great director than a small role in a mediocre movie.
Tahar Rahim
#9. I got into a brawl one night in a saloon in Greenwich Village. Elia Kazan, a great director, saw me put out a couple of hecklers and figures there was some Big Daddy in me, just lyin' dormant. And out it came. People still do call me Big Daddy, but to me, inside, I'm no Big Daddy at all.
Burl Ives
#10. I don't see how it's a risky thing to take a great part with a great director and a great script. That, to me, is not really a dangerous, risky proposition. It's actually a really good choice.
Dennis Quaid
#11. Any great director is also someone who is incredibly intelligent about whom they hire around them.
Ryan Reynolds
#12. I've never had help from anyone, ever. I've never had this great director who saw themselves in me, because I'm a French woman in Hollywood. Who could identify with me as a successful director in Hollywood? Nobody. And the few people who could have been mentors, instead they just stole my ideas.
Julie Delpy
#13. I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells ... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.
Tyler Perry
#14. I want to have a great director, and also a great producer and co-stars. And there should be a tight script. After all, regardless of how the film turns out, I must have fun doing the film!
Kajol
#16. I was too dumb to know Opie was going to grow up to be a great Director, if so, boy, I would certainly have become his best friend.
George Lindsey
#17. David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He's not only a great director, but he's also a great writer.
Adam McKay
#18. Alexander Gonzalez Inarritu is a great director. He's the one I first worked with. He's amazing.
Gael Garcia Bernal
#19. A great director or leader knows his people, creates a great team, and then makes a great movie that can influence millions more than the readers of his column.
Warren Bennis
#20. I'd love to direct, and I think I'd be a great director, but ... I've been approved by the studio to direct, which I think is a cool jump of faith for them. Or proof that they're really stupid. But I don't think so.
Paul Reubens
#21. There's something mystical and wonderful about being in the room with the actual live performer s on stage that works. In film, it doesn't work so you're dependent on a great director to keep the thing moving along.
Marshall Brickman
#22. I think today there are too many directors taking themselves seriously; the only one capable of saying anything really new and interesting is Luis Bunuel. He's a very great director.
Luchino Visconti
#23. Warren Beatty is a great director. I wish Warren would direct another film right now, because I'd love to do another film with Warren. I think that 'Dick Tracy' is an outstanding film in its own right.
William Forsythe
#25. Working with a great director is wonderful for an actor because it means that you're not forced to take the advice of an idiot.
Klaus Kinski
#26. The thing that separates a so-so director and a great director is a love and caring for film.
Shirley Knight
#27. I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing.
Clint Eastwood
#28. I've always thought Ed Burns was a profoundly underrated actor. He's a great director, obviously. A great director/writer. But I think he's a stunning actor, too.
John C. McGinley
#29. When you work with a great director, you realise you are far from being a director.
Barkhad Abdi
#30. There was a time when I desperately wanted to be part of a Yash Chopra film, not because he was a great director, but because I was an outsider and I wanted that validation of being accepted in the film industry.
Katrina Kaif
#31. Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project.
Naomi Watts
#32. I like the conscious manipulation that a great director can have. When you're both complicit in the manipulation of an emotion.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#33. Milos Forman is a great director, Jim Brooks is a wonderful writer and director.
Twyla Tharp
#34. Just being hired by a great director is complimentary.
Tom Skerritt
#35. As for Tenacious D, of course it could work as a full length movie; all it requires is a great writer and great director with an ability to think outside of conventional film comedy.
David Cross
#36. I would love to work with Shane Meadows - great director.
Lena Headey
#37. Do you imagine Sergio Leone with a philosophy? Come on! He was a primitive of movies, a great director on set.
Luciano Vincenzoni
#38. Oliver Stone is a great director and I've seen many films over the years, but I try to create stuff out of my own imagination. I want to break all the rules and mess about with it and make a different movie just for the fun of it.
Anthony Hopkins
#39. I got very spoiled. Everybody said you will never ever work on such a good movie, you know. I did, because I went on to work on Captain America, which also has a great director, which is Joe Johnston, one of my heroes who designed the old Star Wars movies.
Daniel Simon
#40. There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who's driving it.
Aaron Johnson
#41. He would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World hatcheries and Awonawilona.
Aldous Huxley
#42. My favorite movie out of the old movies was 'Escape to Witch Mountain.' We were working with horses and bears, and when you have a great friend like Ike and a great director ... it was a great experience.
Kim Richards
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. There are people who expect me to look the way I do on-screen, where I have a great director of photography and fantastic lighting. I'm sorry to disappoint people, but I don't look like that all the time - no actress does.
Catherine Zeta-Jones
#46. Mel is a great director because he's not just a director, he's an actor, so he knows how to direct actors. I loved working with him. He's great as a director. He's so intelligent. He's generous. I really loved him.
Monica Bellucci
#47. Brad Pitt is great fun. He jokes around all the time and has a real quality about him. On set the director called me over and said, 'Jase, just watch him. Watch him move.' Instead of walking, Brad literally glides. It's incredible.
Jason Flemyng
#48. When you hire great actors, you're lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You're happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director's chair.
Ben Affleck
#49. I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom.
Kelli O'Hara
#50. I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it.
Helmut Newton
#51. In order to do 'Amores Perros,' I had to skip some time at drama school, so the director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu came up with a great Latin American solution, which was to say I had a tropical disease and had to stay in Mexico for a while. Everyone believed me.
Gael Garcia Bernal
#52. I love working with Darren Lynn Bousman. He is such a cool director with really great ideas.
Alexa Vega
#53. David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#54. Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.
James Franco
#55. So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.
Christian Bale
#56. I think what's great about that relationship between an actor and a Director is you have to really blow away all your thing, the safety things that you put up.
Hilary Swank
#57. My first motion capture game was with Sony - 'NBA: The Life.' It was very ahead of its time. Brandon Akiaten, he was the writer and director. He had a real vision of what this game was meant to be; it was a basketball game where I was the Jerry Maguire sports agent type guy. And it was great!
Nolan North
#58. I've worked with some of the great cinematographers. So I'm always watching what they do and I'm watching how the director composes his shots, just because I find it interesting as an actor; you're trying to help them out as well.
Eric Bana
#59. Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vision of the director.
Sally Hawkins
#60. I had to go and sing with the musical director of the film, Simon Lee, who is just incredible, and it went great. I sang with him about five things, things we'd worked on. And then I went to sing for Andrew Lloyd Weber.
Gerard Butler
#61. What makes it frustrating is when a director or a studio head doesn't see me for the same part that they'll see, let's say, Drew Barrymore for. Drew's a great friend of mine. But it's like, "No, we want more of an American type of girl."
Eva Mendes
#62. Some people work very closely with a director or a producer on something, and from the get go, they're collaborating. But typically, it's just go in for an audition, do the best you can, and if the phone rings a couple of days after the audition and you get the part, that's great.
Roger Craig Smith
#63. Being nominated is a great thrill, and we like to say that all four of us were nominated, which means that our director, Anthony Page was nominated four times.
Bill Irwin
#64. I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.
Paul Bettany
#65. On a lot of shows that I've done, we had the same directors, which was cool. But then, it's also great to do shows where the director changes every week, because you get to see all these different personalities and see what you like dealing with better, as an actor.
Laura Prepon
#66. When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
Wynton Marsalis
#67. The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part's not that great.
Jessica Lange
#68. Every director is different. One of the great things about getting to work with so many directors in one TV series is collaborating with different artistic visions and voices. And they all have something to offer and making the story better and bringing their vision to what you see in the frame.
Beau Willimon
#69. I believe that the director is really the soul. It is a collaborative effort, but the director is the one who needs to have that vision. It could be a great script, but it starts from there. You need to have good material, at least, but if you don't have someone with vision, it's just words.
Michelle Yeoh
#70. I had never done a Director's Cut narration on Beaches so I did in time for the release of the DVD. It was a great visit and I do a whole-behind-the-scenes thing and I tell stories about Bette [Mudler] and Barbara Hershey and everybody and that was fun. It made me cry again.
Garry Marshall
#71. I've actually been given a great gift. When I walk into an audition with a director, I'm carrying no baggage. They haven't seen me in anything, even though I've done nine films.
Jessica Chastain
#72. I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good.
Howard Shore
#73. Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.
Steven Knight
#74. The illustrations in the book are beautiful. The story is a great
page-turner and is very clear and easy to read. The children really enjoy answering the questions."-Kay Harling (Director Emerald Preschool & Community Kindergarten, B.Ed Early Childhood.)
Allison Jenkinson
#75. I have done films where we all thought the director didn't know what he was doing and it is going to be a gobble gobble turkey. And you go and watch it and it is great.
Kevin Spacey
#76. Richard Lester is a wonderful director, a great comedy director, of course.
Malcolm McDowell
#77. The Dead was cool, It's a great horror story. I went to the casting director of this movie and talked to him, then they called my agent and had me come in and read for it and they wanted to use me.
Matthew McGrory
#78. When I was starting as an anime director I wanted to be known for great things. I never wanted to be known for some overblown toy commercial.
Yoshiyuki Tomino
#79. I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.
Aaron Eckhart
#80. As a designer, design director or any creative person, you have to hire great people, support them and make them feel comfortable so they can contribute and give you their best.
Tom Ford
#81. I love working with Scorsese. He's not only a brilliant director and is great working with actors, but he's also a walking human film encyclopedia. It's fun to talk about movies with him.
Steve Buscemi
#82. A historian ought to be exact, sincere and impartial;
free from passion, unbiased by interest, fear, resentment or affection;
and faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history the preserver of great actions, the enemy of oblivion, the witness of the past, the director of the future.
B.R. Ambedkar
#83. Jon Scoffield was an incredible director and producer at ATV. I met him when I was 30 and he made great things happen in my career. He's still alive, but we're no longer in touch.
Nigel Lythgoe
#84. As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer.
Vilmos Zsigmond
#85. The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes.
Robert Olen Butler
#86. When you're a first time director, you're often considered what's called a "deadly attachment" in the eyes of financiers, because they're trusting you with a lot of money to bring something home, to get great performances, to not have a nervous breakdown in the process.
John Krokidas
#87. One of my philosophies as a director is to listen to other people's great ideas because they'll help make you better.
Jonathan Frakes
#88. I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.
Sam Mendes
#89. Being an actor is great; you chill in your trailer, and they bring you a breakfast burrito and coffee. But as director, you're responsible for every little thing.
Justin Chon
#90. We had a great dramatic society in school, and that's where I first got exposure both as an actor and director.
Randeep Hooda
#91. You are a dancer in this great stage we call life. Your imagination is the writer and thoughts are the director of the dance drama. So unleash your thoughts to dramatize your dance.
Debasish Mridha
#92. As long as you have a director, that's your feedback. It's the director telling you, "Okay. That was great! Okay. Can we add a little? Can you tweak it like this? Can you make it more high pitched? Can you give it a little growl?"
Gabriel Iglesias
#93. We often hear of a male director directing a great indie and immediately being offered the next huge comic book movie. Rarely, if ever, does this happen to a woman.
Lesli Linka Glatter
#94. Acting is about animality. It's great to be allowed to be animal. But I feel more alive as a director. Every morning, I have to write.
Mathieu Amalric
#95. Kelly Preston is a remarkable human being and a great dramatic actress. It was a privilege as a director to tap into this part of her. Rarely do I make a kind of spiritual connection with my cast. Kelly was a wonderful exception. She is truly very special and I adore her.
George Hickenlooper
#96. Obviously, you know, I am known as an action director, and being a film editor previously had been a great advantage for me as an action director.
John Glen
#97. I'm not really a director for hire. You read these scripts and go, 'This is a really great script, but Paul Greengrass would make this so much better than me.' I usually say, 'I know who would be good for this. It's not me.'
Stephen Daldry
#98. The spiritual director should not reduce his attention to the internal life because of external occupations, nor should he relinquish his care for external matters because of his anxiety for the internal life.
Gregory The Great
#99. In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.
Felicity Kendal
#100. I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.
Steve Buscemi
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