Great Director Quotes

#1. 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

#2. Working with a great director is like getting a master class in acting.

Swoosie Kurtz

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. Peter Jackson is a wonderful man. He's a great director. He's found his niche in life.

Luke Evans

#7. 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

#8. Sometimes a great director will do a bad job and an okay director will do a great job. You never know.

Ronald Meyer

#9. 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

#10. I love working with Darren Lynn Bousman. He is such a cool director with really great ideas.

Alexa Vega

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

Akira Kurosawa

#28. 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

#29. Classics stay alive because a great actor or a great director wants to do them.

Scott Rudin

#30. I'd rather have one good scene in a movie by a great director than a small role in a mediocre movie.

Tahar Rahim

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. Any great director is also someone who is incredibly intelligent about whom they hire around them.

Ryan Reynolds

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. Richard Lester is a wonderful director, a great comedy director, of course.

Malcolm McDowell

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells ... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.

Tyler Perry

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. Larry Kasdan is a great director.

Brion James

#59. We had a great dramatic society in school, and that's where I first got exposure both as an actor and director.

Randeep Hooda

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He's not only a great director, but he's also a great writer.

Adam McKay

#69. 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

#70. In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.

Felicity Kendal

#71. 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

#72. I had great luck with Tim McGraw twice in 'Friday Night Lights' and 'The Kingdom.' I love finding off-beat casting and finding someone you know in one way and you reinvent them in another way. I like doing that as a director.

Peter Berg

#73. Alexander Gonzalez Inarritu is a great director. He's the one I first worked with. He's amazing.

Gael Garcia Bernal

#74. 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

#75. I've always had good relationships with directors. I'm one of those people where, if there's a good idea coming from the sound guy, I'll take it. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort, whether it's a first-time director or it's Mike Nichols. I think that's the standard that the great ones set.

Patrick Wilson

#76. David Boreanaz is actually a very good director and he directed one of our episodes. Excellent director, knew exactly what he wanted. We never had long days with David. He was great, he knew exactly what he wanted and he's a fantastic director.

Michael Clarke Duncan

#77. It is so great to go to a casting director and have them wanting to talk about the show that you are in. It's such a great icebreaker. It just makes the environment so much more relaxed.

Nathalie Emmanuel

#78. 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

#79. 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

#80. The director of 500 Days of Summer is doing the Spider-Man movie. That's not necessarily the movies I want to make, but it's all about the story, and if you connect to the story, and you feel you can tell that story better than anyone else, then great. Jon Favreau killed Iron Man, I loved it.

Katie Aselton

#81. 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

#82. I would be a terrible director, I could never write anything. One of my great strengths is that I know all of my weaknesses.

Topher Grace

#83. You spend enough time on set as an actor and it's great when a director was at some point an actor or understands acting. They're able to finesse performances out of you that a lot directors can't get.

Ian Somerhalder

#84. 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

#85. A great difference between May and Day is the M and D! Be a good Managing Director of your life each day in May.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#86. Rob Hardy is such a great director.

Jussie Smollett

#87. 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

#88. 'The Bank Job' was great fun to work on. Roger Donaldson is a top director, and working on HD was a new experience. It picks up every detail, which is a blessing and a curse if you think about it.

Colin Salmon

#89. By the time I got to be director of product management at Thomas-Conrad, I was in a better negotiating position, as I had accumulated more accomplishments and gained a reputation for having a great work ethic.

Maynard Webb

#90. The thing that separates a so-so director and a great director is a love and caring for film.

Shirley Knight

#91. After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director.

Justin Chadwick

#92. 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

#93. I know the pressures of being the daughter of a great actress. But it's inspiring. You learn so much that other people don't get to learn until later on. My father being a director, I learnt a real work ethic.

Natasha Richardson

#94. 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

#95. When you work with a great director, you realise you are far from being a director.

Barkhad Abdi

#96. A singer can quit once he or she has made ten great songs; a director can finish once he or she has made five amazing films; a writer just needs to write three great books.

Alber Elbaz

#97. As far as an actor-director connection, I think those can develop, and when they do, they're really great, and you just cultivate it like you would any relationship or friendship. If you find that something special, it helps down the line when you want to do more projects with each other.

Taylor Handley

#98. 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

#99. As a director, you're given a tremendous apparatus to work with, and very great talents are available to you.

William Monahan

#100. 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