Hollywood Directors Quotes

#1. Too often, you see film makers from other countries who have made interesting, original films, and then they come here and get homogenized into being hack Hollywood directors. I don't want to fall into that.

Peter Jackson

#2. A lot of new American directors have had mentors who have given them advice. And some of them have had the way paved for them by huge Hollywood directors who saw a younger version of themselves.

Julie Delpy

#3. A commanding woman versed in politics, diplomacy, and governance; fluent in nine languages; silver-tongued and charismatic, Cleopatra nonetheless seems the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors.

Stacy Schiff

#4. There are thousands of directors in Hollywood.

Penelope Spheeris

#5. As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.

Al Sharpton

#6. There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste.

Ridley Scott

#7. I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

Nick Cave

#8. The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character

Roland Barthes

#9. Hollywood needs more women directors, and Mama Ava needs a carafe and a half of that sweet vino divino.

Ava DuVernay

#10. Maybe poverty is a special case of something else. That something else is 'scarcity,' and anyone who has the experience of 'having very little' experiences the same psychology.

Sendhil Mullainathan

#11. Overseas directors who want to work in Hollywood, the language barrier is not a problem. With the right talent, any director can be successful.

Kim Jee-woon

#12. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, there are those directors that have some contempt for actors. We've all experienced that, in one way or another.

Vin Diesel

#13. There are really only a handful of directors who have a final cut clause in Hollywood. You only get that power if you've made a couple of hundred-million-dollar successes.

Gillian Armstrong

#14. It is not easy to get parts in mainstream films for most people of color. Hollywood and British writers are not writing parts for us, or the directors are not interested in casting us in parts that are color-blind.

Naveen Andrews

#15. I had to endure the worst time of all in terms of racial discrimination in Hollywood when I first started out. It was inconcievable to American directors and producers that a Mexican woman could have a lead role.

Salma Hayek

#16. The whole point of interior design is about creating environments where people can really live their lives and where you can connect with your friends and family.

Vern Yip

#17. Everybody just asks me 'Are you going to make Hollywood movies now?' First, I don't know. Second, I never dreamed about that; I just dreamed about making movies with Tarantino. So if I can make movies with a lot of amazing directors - yes.

Melanie Laurent

#18. Richard Donner is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can make whatever movie he wants exactly the way he wants it. No one will stop him.

Lana Wachowski

#19. As you know, I'm all about victory for the underdog.

Stewart Rahr

#20. The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers. In general, people like that are going to be more progressive, more open minded, a little more altruistic.

Adam McKay

#21. I came across awful characters when I got some kind of status and came to Hollywood. Then you have directors trying to sleep with you, assuming that you will do things because of the way you dress.

Stacey Dash

#22. Self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

Stephen R. Covey

#23. The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda ... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine.

Paul Haggis

#24. I worked with fantastic actors, fantastic directors. People I would never otherwise have met. Was I limited? Yes. Did I use it as I could have? No. But I was always ambivalent about Hollywood and what I wanted. And ambivalence in our business is no good for success.

Valeria Golino

#25. The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.

Mike Leigh

#26. Because of 'The Birds' and 'Marnie' I was, as the expression goes, hot in Hollywood and producers and directors wanted to hire me.

Tippi Hedren

#27. Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime

Zoltan Kodaly

#28. I am all for your using machines, but do not let them use you.

Winston Churchill

#29. If you are a star in Hollywood then you are always a star in your eyes, but not always in the eyes of new directors for whom your great performances are always fading into the past.

Lee Grant

#30. The popular image that Hollywood is ruined by difficult prima donna actors is nonsense. They're certainly very nice to directors. I can't say the same about producers, who I found difficult, paranoid, and certifiably insane, mostly.

Nigel Cole

#31. One of the common themes you will read in interview after interview is the call to keep fighting for your vision. This is a message to women directors, producers, writers - anyone who wants to work in the business. Your voice counts. Your vision matters.

Melissa Silverstein

#32. I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.

Martin Scorsese

#33. So many directors are solely focused on their own success in Hollywood and multimillion dollar budgets and deals.

Shirley Knight

#34. Just do not pull that fucking trigger. Do you understand what I'm saying? Don't. You will be personally responsible for the deadliest screwup in the history of humankind, and I'm on a ship with Jim fucking Holden, so the bar's not low.

James S.A. Corey

#35. Well into the '40s, it wasn't uncommon for big-budget Hollywood movies to contain little or no underscoring, and many of today's directors, following the lead of Martin Scorsese in 'GoodFellas,' accompany their films with pop records, not original music.

Terry Teachout

#36. I thought that Hollywood was just for geniuses and that directors come from three generations of directors. I was worried that I was not up to the challenge of making a movie. Then realized that all a director has to do is know what he wants to do.

Fede Alvarez

#37. The turning point in my career was Jaws. It was a turning point because I was a director-for-hire before Jaws and because it was such a big hit I could do any movie I wanted and Hollywood just wrote me a cheque.

Steven Spielberg

#38. It felt amazing to be one of a handful working female directors in Hollywood.

Tamra Davis