Movie Director Sayings

#1. When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director.

Rebecca De Mornay

#2. I'm a curious person. I pursue things based on what sparks my interest. I'm not thinking about what role I play. I don't have to be a movie director or this or that. I just want to be part of projects and places that are of interest to me.

Roman Coppola

#3. I want to get into the theater. I really wanted to be a theater director, but I turned out to be a movie director.

Frank Oz

#4. There's nobody who loves being around actors working more than David Mamet, especially actors bringing his tremendous dialogue to life. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave.

Clark Gregg

#5. I never aspired to be a television producer and a movie director, and I'm shocked that this idea is still going on.

Jeff Tremaine

#6. In England, I'm a horror movie director. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In the US, I'm a bum.

John Carpenter

#7. I will never become a director or a movie producer. I was always looking at picture directing because I didn't know what to do! You can't be a movie director without real preparation.

Liam Neeson

#8. I'm like a movie director, so wherever I feel that I need to go over this type of beat, that's what I'm going to do, that's where I'm going to go.

Ghostface Killah

#9. Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

Tom Perrotta

#10. If you look at the least effective of the 'Twilight' movies, it was when they brought in an action-movie director instead of a director who was really a good storyteller. And you can tell the difference.

Mark Waters

#11. The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

Robert Doisneau

#12. Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature.

Michael Fassbender

#13. Egotism is not a good quality. It's not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn't be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn't be tolerated in a movie director.

John Milius

#14. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave [Mamet]. His sets, everyone who's ever been involved with one of them will tell you of the funnest, funniest sets you can be on.

Clark Gregg

#15. When a filmmaker does not make films, it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail. The main question is: why should it be a crime to make a movie? A finished film, well, it can get banned but not the director.

Jafar Panahi

#16. My biggest role as director on the film is keeping a sense of the overview - how to cast the movie and shoot it in such a way that it will cut together. And how to design the style and tone.

Jay Roach

#17. When you are shooting a movie, you have to collaborate with many, many, many people. First of all, the director with all his own ideas and I can only just help him with that. I cannot change his idea.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#18. Getting movies made is not as difficult as people think. Making movies is easy. You get a script, you get a director, you raise the money, you make the movie.

Stephen Baldwin

#19. Every story is different, every movie is different, every director is different.

Marion Cotillard

#20. 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

#21. In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director - especially if he wrote part of the script himself - is clearly more the author of the movie.

Mark Romanek

#22. Also, I plan to screw something up on every movie I do so that I can learn from my mistakes and become a better director with each project.

Richard King

#23. Usually, I don't want to sit down and listen to the director gas on about his movie. I just can't actually imagine myself sitting down and having that much to say.

Joel Coen

#24. I read the books the day before I had met with (director) Catherine Hardwicke. The first I heard of it was my agent called and said, 'Do you want to be in a vampire movie?' and I said 'No.' I thought it was like a zombie, blood-and-guts, vampire movie.

Peter Facinelli

#25. It's depend of the communication, I think it's very important to let the director make his own vision of the character, not making a studio movie. Look the Dark Knight it's totally the vision of Nolan.

Xavier Gens

#26. According to the director, Primer is a movie about the relationship between risk and trust. This is true. But it also makes a concrete point about the potential purpose of time travel - it's too important to use only for money, but too dangerous to use for anything else.

Chuck Klosterman

#27. I'd love to do another 'Indiana Jones.' A character that has a history and a potential, kind of a rollicking good movie ride for the audience, Steven Spielberg as a director - what's not to like?

Harrison Ford

#28. 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

#29. We're producing a movie now, 'The Onion' Movie, and it's very difficult for me to be on the set. If I'm not right in the trenches, it's very difficult for me to watch another director, because I'm not involved and it's not exciting.

David Zucker

#30. It's not like every director in every movie is seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I'm not suited for, a lot of things I'm not interested in, and a lot of things that directors wouldn't be interested in me for.

John Hawkes

#31. Really, it's the director's job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel.

Jason Reitman

#32. 'Carrie' was a pretty big-budget movie at a real studio, with a director that had already done a bunch of things and had some notoriety, and Stephen King was the writer.

P. J. Soles

#33. 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

#34. For John Woo, it is quite difficult to make a movie in Hollywood in his own style. Because Hollywood is based on a producer system, it is difficult for a director to express himself using his own style of filmmaking.

Alan Mak

#35. It has never ever been a bad thing in Hollywood to be sleeping with a director who's just won an Oscar or the hot new movie star whose face is on the cover of 'Time' magazine.

Kelly Rutherford

#36. I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has.

John Frankenheimer

#37. Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

Bret Easton Ellis

#38. You have a soft spot in your heart for each movie, and you're doing certain things. You're learning as you're going, as a director, and each movie is its own entity.

Chris Buck

#39. Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.

David Fincher

#40. If a movie doesn't even have financing yet, they'll do a table read for it at a casting director's office with actors, for the producer and the writer, just to hear if the movie is working.

Bill Hader

#41. When you do a movie, it's like going on a journey. It's really like the director is the captain of the ship, and that energy, everybody feels.

Kellan Lutz

#42. 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

#43. The movie Ed Wood, about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for Stargate.

Roger Ebert

#44. A lot of times the character's experience is not in accordance with the tone of the movie and it's not really my job to account for the tone of the movie. That's the director's job.

Jesse Eisenberg

#45. Producers don't like the director who ignores their opinion - but I always try not to be the nicest person when making a movie. It's easy to do that. Just say 'Yes sir', Alright', 'Okay' - but they're not seeing the movie because if they can, they should be directing the movie.

Ryuhei Kitamura

#46. I produce the way I would love to be produced: In ways to create the best conditions to make your movie, but also to create a space in which the director calls the shots.

Alfonso Cuaron

#47. I think that's what makes David Ayer really interesting. He likes to make a tough-y movie, but actually he's a character director. He's fascinated by the actual people who decide to have these jobs and the way it affects their lives.

Mireille Enos

#48. If you are a writer/director, the [movie] characters are a part of yourself.

Juan Diego Solanas

#49. We are now, all of us, cinematographers for the movie of our own lives. Not the star. Not the director. Not even the writer.

Andrew Kaufman

#50. On a movie set that works, you have your father figure, the director, you have your siblings, your other actors.

Richard Gere

#51. Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

Ridley Scott

#52. I'm a huge fan of movies, and I watch DVDs all day, and I like to be able to watch DVDs that are different from what was in theaters. Whether that's uncut or a director's cut. I think it's an awesome way to rediscover the movie.

Alexandre Aja

#53. Capra is an old-time movie craftsman, the master of every trick in the bag, and in many ways he is more at home with the medium than any other Hollywood director. But all of his details give the impression of contrived effect.

Manny Farber

#54. It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect ... You know, I'm in.

Brad Pitt

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

Tahar Rahim

#56. If a director brings a guy to their movie who does improv, they've got to let him do what he does - otherwise it's like bringing Michael Jordan to your basketball team and telling him to just pass the ball and don't shoot.

J. B. Smoove

#57. 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director - who were just fun.

Steve Martin

#58. My first in, my first break, was I met a director and got to talking with her, and she happened to be casting this movie that she had written. That was ten years ago. That got me to Hollywood. I got paid $700 bucks.

Chris Pratt

#59. It's very hard to admit that the choice of 3D technology can play an important role for the director while he's thinking about the movie. But it does play a big role.

Fedor Bondarchuk

#60. I look at the script first and who's directing it and then talk to the director to find out what his vision of the movie is and if it matches my vision and then we go after it.

Frank Grillo

#61. Movie making is really, it's a director's medium, it's not even so much an actor's medium.

Rebecca Romijn

#62. 'Election' is a movie I'd give a leg to cross the director's name out and put mine in.

Jason Reitman

#63. If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

Michael Caine

#64. There are two parts of me. There's the really critical, film-nerd part of me that loves that, and then there's the part of me where I'm like, "I really didn't like that movie, but I want to work with that director because he loves actors."

Anton Yelchin

#65. A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again.

Jean Renoir

#66. 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

#67. I think it's the director's prerogative, not the studio's, to go back and reinvent a movie.

Oscar Isaac

#68. My first movie ever was 'Breaking Away.' I stumbled into an incredible part in a movie that was incredible to be a part of. Peter Yates, the director, became a lifelong friend. He sort of plucked me from obscurity and gave me a life.

Daniel Stern

#69. Some of my favorite scenes aren't in the movie. Because you, at some point, realize that your responsibility as director is purely to the story. It's not to your pleasure.

Mark Ruffalo

#70. I think [director] Malcolm Lee is a real master at being able to make you laugh while bringing serious subject-matter, so the movie doesn't hinge on silliness, but on real life.

Ice Cube

#71. How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie.

Daniel Day-Lewis

#72. You want the film to be critically successful - you certainly want the film to be financially successful so that you can ... well, because that's how movies like this are made, you know, they need to make money. But as a director, you can only make the movie that you want to make.

Joseph Kosinski

#73. I personally find that each instalment has a different director, cast and crew, and I've also been in a different season in my life for each of them, so I feel like each movie is a unique experience that centres around my undying passion for music and dance.

Alyson Stoner

#74. 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

#75. It doesn't matter where you make movies or what the size of the movie you make is. It's a very hard job - especially director.

Ryuhei Kitamura

#76. Use people whom you're excited by and who share your excitement ... The ideal collaboration is one in which the actor and director are saying to each other, 'I can't believe how lucky we are to be making a movie together.'

James Toback

#77. I would like Albert Brooks to have received the Oscars for best actor, best director and best screenplay for 'Modern Romance.' I love that movie.

Andy Kindler

#78. Whenever I really want a part, I'm not sure what to do. How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie?

Jennifer Lawrence

#79. I always choose my movie because of a director and a story and a, a character.

Melanie Laurent

#80. For me, it's important that a movie is the congregate of all art forms, from writing to art composition to music to performing. Trying to keep a balance of all those is what I think a director's job is.

Mick Garris

#81. I was focused on The Hunger Games movie with my director, with the studio, and with the cast and crew. We all just focused on making the best possible movie we could, and earning the right to do more.

Nina Jacobson

#82. As a director, I think it is important to keep a space between yourself and your film. It's like you are in the movie, but at the same time you are watching it from the outside.

Tony Jaa

#83. I'm a lot more selective with work these days. My perfect plan is to do one movie every nine months. It would have to be a project that I found inspiring. It would also have to include other actors and a director I am inspired to work with.

Gwyneth Paltrow

#84. If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.

Hans Zimmer

#85. Josh Radnor is that rare thing: a writer-director who thinks like an actor but still knows how to create a comedy with shape and vision. Liberal Arts is the best movie about college I've seen since I don't know what ... Dryly affectionate and super-sharp. Elizabeth Olsen is every inch a star.

Owen Gleiberman

#86. In a normal movie, the director controls what you look at. The shots don't last very long because you're getting the audience to look at specific things. An IMAX shot, on the other hand, can be twenty or thirty seconds long.

Greg MacGillivray

#87. For something to be profitable doesn't necessarily mean it's the best thing in the world for the director. You judge a movie by different standards - I've worked on comedies, and now I've worked on superhero movies, and the reviews are almost parenthetical in both of those genres.

Jon Favreau

#88. I liked 'Robocop' because of the director, and it was an intelligent, big-action studio movie.

Michael Keaton

#89. I was six years old when I saw my first Godard movie, eight when I first experienced Bergman. I wanted to be a director when I was fourteen.

Julie Delpy

#90. You always like to be the collaborator. I don't want to take over the movie, because if I want to do that, I should really become a director because then you have the control of everything, basically. I'm very happy to just be the visual part of it, doing the visual part of the movie.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#91. A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

Frank Darabont

#92. I had a dream about you. We were actors in a horror movie and I was hunting you down with a knife. When I finally cornered you the director yelled "Cut".... What? I can't be blamed for following instructions.

Georgia Saratsioti

#93. I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.

Chris Matthews

#94. And if I'm running away from something, I try to make myself face it and overcome that initial fear. As a director, I don't think it's possible to make a movie that you really don't want to make.

Takashi Miike

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. 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

#98. When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he's going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there's one guy: the director. It's different in television.

Holt McCallany

#99. How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten letters? Is it going to seem cheesy? What do I do?'

Jennifer Lawrence

#100. It's a director's job to tell a story and he's very well versed in telling stories with a bit of comedy in them and keeping the pace of the movie right and that's exactly what he did. He was observant of a world he didn't understand but he told a wonderful story.

Cuba Gooding Jr.