Quotes About Spielberg

#1. Eight years ago, I was a waiter, and I didn't have a pot to piss in. And now ... ? It's like I said to my wife: I love the fact that, if I was in a restaurant and Steven Spielberg walked in, I could go up to him and say, 'Hey, mate, how are you?' I think that's pretty amazing, actually.

Nick Frost

#2. Spielberg knows his craft so well, he can also improvise, and that is a lot of fun.

Max Von Sydow

#3. Spielberg was very young and starting up when we did Sugarland Express and I loved that, but the main thing was that I really loved his talent.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#4. I think one of the reasons that Steven (Spielberg) and I have been as successful as we have is because we like the movies. We like to go to the movies. We enjoy movies and we want to make movies like the ones we enjoy.

George Lucas

#5. I like Soderbergh, Spielberg, Lucas. There's a lot of talented guys out there obviously, and if you're a fan of films, you have to look at that stuff and learn from them.

David R. Ellis

#6. I'm not a huge Steven Spielberg nerd, but I know about him and I know of his work.

Joel Courtney

#7. 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

#8. In a film muddied by fictional detail, the new Spielberg production 'Fifth Estate's portrayal of the 'Guardian's work with Wikileaks is accurate in describing the running dispute between journalists who wanted to redact documents to make them safe and Julian Assange, who wanted no such restraint.

Nick Davies

#9. I saw 'Tintin' in Europe - it is 'Indiana Jones' on steroids. Unbelievable. What a fantastic movie. Steven Spielberg, you rock the house. And working with those young English guys like Edgar Wright, and also Peter Jackson; what a great combination.

Harvey Weinstein

#10. One evening, Mike Myers and Steven Spielberg were discussing 'Goldmember,' and I just happened to joke, 'If you need a Japanese character, let me know!' The next day, they called me for audition! I find it's always helpful to maintain a sense of humour.

Nobu Matsuhisa

#11. I've always got stuff in my head in case I meet somebody like Steven Spielberg or someone like that, where I can hopefully say something to them that nobody else has ever said and get a laugh out of them.

Drew Carey

#12. The idea of working with Steven Spielberg was very attractive. He's such a master. He knows the language of the camera and of filmmaking, which gives him a great freedom.

Max Von Sydow

#13. The first person to make me realize there was someone behind the film was Steven Spielberg.

Philippe Falardeau

#14. I would love to share the screen with Meryl Streep, wouldn't we all? I would love to work with Spielberg and Scorsese; that would be lovely. I'm also a huge fan of Johnny Depp and the way he creates his characters, so that would be fun. I mean, any of the greats, really.

Grace Gealey

#15. A large part of the people in Hollywood are sheep - and I don't say that unkindly, I say that politically - if Spielberg and Streisand and Geffen and the others were Republicans tomorrow, you would see a shortage of paper to try and change registrations.

Jerry Doyle

#16. I feel that I will be more of a feature director, and I will go away completely from videos. I want to do features and have written several of them. I'm looking to be more like a Steven Spielberg.

Chris Stokes

#17. You know that you're part of a Spielberg production when you've got some aliens involved, but you really know when you're sitting there at a table read, and they say, 'Steven really wanted it this way.'

Jessy Schram

#18. I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad ... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

Anthony Hopkins

#19. If Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Bono had a baby, I would be that baby.

Jason Russell

#20. I spent time on set in New York and Berlin sitting next to Steven Spielberg while he worked, which was the biggest thrill of my life.

Matt Charman

#21. I'm crazy about Steven Spielberg. Another inspiration for me, and I don't know where it came from, is children. If I'm down, I'll take a book with children's pictures and look at it and it will just lift me up. Being around children is magic.

Michael Jackson

#22. I've worked with Steven Spielberg three times. I'm proud to say that I'm one of those actors that continues to get hired by the same directors.

Joe Pantoliano

#23. Spielberg gave us three takes before saying anything to us. Since then, I do that, three takes, to let the actors find their rhythm.

Edward Burns

#24. In AI, Spielberg is bleaching the dirt out of the human mind and leaving behind only the vacant gaze of machine 'love'. Coca Cola ads do much the same thing - and they don't take two hours.

Bryan Appleyard

#25. I really liked 'Super 8'. If Steven Spielberg is an executive producer of anything, you know that it's going to be amazing!

Chandler Riggs

#26. I like how you can go back and watch David Lean and John Ford and see the influence that had on Steven Spielberg, especially David Lean, in the camerawork, and yet, you don't watch any Spielberg movie and think of David Lean. Once you're looking for it, you see it all, but it's not in your face.

Colin Trevorrow

#27. I really want to work with Hugh Jackman and also Steven Spielberg.

Rohan Chand

#28. The influence of Steven Spielberg to my career is unquantifiable. Every day on the set with him is a master class in filmmaking.

Caroline Goodall

#29. I've always loved fantasy. I've always loved sci-fi. It's not like I can list off my favorite sci-fi shows or movies, but I just love being taken into a different world. I'm a huge fan of Steven Spielberg. I'm a huge fan of George Lucas. I've always loved it.

Ksenia Solo

#30. I can't wait to meet Steven Spielberg or Al Pacino again so I can say, 'I have to tell you how you know me. You know me because I am the worst actor in the world.'

Jim Rash

#31. The way Steven Spielberg sees the world has become the way the world is communicated back to us every day.

Stephen Schiff

#32. I had done a couple of auditions for 'Amistad' and didn't feel it was going to go any further - and then the call came about heading to Los Angeles to work with Steven Spielberg. It was surreal: exciting, challenging, overwhelming.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

#33. But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.

Damien Hirst

#34. I'm just glad I got to work with the likes of Spielberg.

Jason Biggs

#35. Having a phone call from Steven Spielberg was just a fantastic rite of passage. I loved it, and he was very focused, very likable, strictly business, and really sharp.

Peter Morgan

#36. Hardly any filmmakers can just make anything they want. Obviously, there are some exceptions, like Steven Spielberg, but he has that mainstream mentality and the kinds of films he loves to make are the kind that appeal to this big, mass audience.

Catherine Hardwicke

#37. I'm a 'Star Wars' kid. I'm a 'Back to the Future' kid. I'm a Spielberg kid.

Colin Trevorrow

#38. I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting.

Bob Balaban

#39. I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I never worked as a journalist for one moment.

Nancy Meyers

#40. Scorsese, Spielberg, Tarantino, Peter Jackson - all of you: I'm here, I'm ready. I can do funny faces, I can sing, I can dance. Hire me!

Cara Delevingne

#41. For actors, when you first get the project and you see that it's a Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman-produced project, right away, from an acting standpoint, you go, 'Wow. That'd be great to be part of that. What a career move that'd be.'

Jon Seda

#42. Growing up, I had the weird fantasy list: I wanted to be Alice Cooper, Steven Spielberg, and Stan Lee. You have to have almost psychotic drive, because you're going to have years of failure.

Rob Zombie

#43. The light was misty and actinic, the sort of light to make Steven Spielberg reach for his copyright lawyer.

Terry Pratchett

#44. The only person who can, with impunity, make the movie he wants to make, has got to be Steven Spielberg.

Frank Darabont

#45. Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are men at the top of their game, and Jackson especially is going to change the nature of film-making.

John Rhys-Davies

#46. I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: "I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can't. It's the best film I've seen since Citizen Kane".

Barbra Streisand

#47. When 'The Pacific' came around, I had to audition the old-fashioned way. It was the casting director and then the producer and then another producer and another producer and then Spielberg and Hanks.

Joseph Mazzello

#48. I would love to see Steven Spielberg working. I just think he's the greatest living director.

Peter Segal

#49. My dad couldn't connect to my wanting to be a filmmaker. He was very connected in entertainment, and through him I met Steven Spielberg and got rides on his private plane to California. I'd see Spielberg's people reading scripts. I was like, 'That's what I want to be when I grow up.'

Doug Liman

#50. I can imagine [the government] trying to tell Steven Spielberg 'We need 50 different cuts of your movie for each state.' It will screw us up in a real way.

John Riccitiello

#51. In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

Ray Winstone

#52. We pay for content that we like, and we like the content we pay for. It's a lot more satisfying to pay $7.50 for Steven Spielberg's next epic than it is to watch my home movies for free. Even for me.

Nathan Myhrvold

#53. The Indiana Jones films have a built in Disney connection, as director Steven Spielberg sent his sound designers down to Disneyland to record Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to provide a soundtrack for the second film's mine chase scene!

The Imagineers

#54. That said, I should also add that I learned a great deal from being allowed in these privileged circles and am grateful for the opportunity to have worked closely with some of the most powerful and successful people in the business including Steven Spielberg and Ted Turner.

Douglas Wood

#55. I got a note from the stage manager one night that someone wanted to meet me. And it was Steven Spielberg.

Corey Reynolds

#56. Stephen Hawking's been watching too many Hollywood movies. I think the only kind aliens in Hollywood are the ones created by Steven Spielberg - 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'E.T.,' for example. All other aliens are trying to suck our brains out.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#57. I adore the work of Lucas and Spielberg. I'm certainly not trying to minimize their talents, but I'd love to see what they could do when they aren't leading us from reality.

Lina Wertmuller

#58. 'Jurassic' is a legacy and a classic. Steven Spielberg created something pretty spectacular. It's actually really interesting, when I look at it, I ask, 'How has my life changed since being Lex?' And I can literally walk into just about any city in the world and people will know who I am.

Ariana Richards

#59. My father got a phone call to bring me in to meet with Spielberg for 'E.T.,' partially because they knew I was a physical kid, and I was known in the business somewhat as a stunt kid, and I could do all the bicycle riding.

C. Thomas Howell

#60. Spielberg's film portrays Oscar as a hero of this century. That is not true. Neither he nor I were heroes. We were just what we were able to be. In war we are all souls without a destiny,

Emilie Schindler

#61. Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o'clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you're acting in it. And I'm inherently lazy.

Albert Brooks

#62. I went from working with Spielberg to working with Clint Eastwood - I might as well just retire.

Owain Yeoman

#63. Sitting opposite Steven Spielberg, while he turns the pages of your script and talks about each scene as he goes, is about the best film school you can get.

Matt Charman

#64. If Steven Spielberg brought me a movie four hours long and said, 'It has to go out this way,' I guarantee you that's the way it would go out.

Sidney Sheinberg

#65. Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg, was pretty cool. It was pretty good.

Whoopi Goldberg

#66. I play a character called Lieutenant Delcourt who, in the original comics, pops up from time to time to rescue Tintin. I guess if you've grown up watching movies like 'Jaws' and 'Indiana Jones,' it's pretty surreal to find yourself on set with Steven Spielberg directing you.

Tony Curran

#67. PRIOR (An awestruck whisper): God almighty.
Very Steven Spielberg.

Tony Kushner

#68. I walked out of Spielberg's 'Lincoln' having such a thirst for more. It used such a microscopic albeit enormous event in American history. It used such a small piece of his presidency to illustrate him as a president through the lens of that event.

Jesse Johnson

#69. I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can't just call him Steven, that's weird ... Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, 'Yeah!'

Diablo Cody

#70. When Steven Spielberg thinks you're the one, then I'll do anything. If you want me to put a dead horse on my head, I'll do it.

Charlotte Le Bon

#71. When Steven Spielberg comes to you and says, 'Hey do you want to write a movie about robots?' You just say yes.

Drew Goddard

#72. I'd love to go to school and have a normal life, but I don't see any professor at Yale being able to teach me more than Steven Spielberg.

Shia Labeouf

#73. Second, this epic tale allows the audience to actually listen to the Native Americans and receive their wisdom. Spielberg conveys the respect for Native Americans that is normally lacking in Western films.

Beau Bridges

#74. My novella, 'The Lucky One,' is inspired in part by my dad and also by a Holocaust survivor I interviewed for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation.

Jenna Blum

#75. I was 12 when I did 'Super 8,' and when Dakota was 12, she did 'War of the Worlds.' Steven Spielberg was involved with both movies, so we both worked with Steven when we were 12.

Elle Fanning

#76. What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.

Bernardo Bertolucci

#77. Actually I'm a big fan of Spielberg and the way he shoots action scenes.

Tommy Wirkola

#78. I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story ... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.

Gus Van Sant

#79. It looked to her like an image out of a Steven Spielberg science fiction movie.

Stephen King

#80. I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

Peter Jackson

#81. Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith.

Ernest Cline

#82. Meeting Oprah Winfrey, I cried like a baby. Meeting Steven Spielberg, I cried like a baby. Meeting Denzel Washington, I gushed like a crazy woman. If I don't get excited or star struck by someone I've been dying to meet, it's time to retire.

Octavia Spencer

#83. [I watch] Fincher, Spielberg, Cameron, McTiernan. Just people who are good at staging action. I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are.

Steven Soderbergh

#84. An ideal movie would be, like - to get this to happen, I have to work so much harder - but imagine Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy ... Who else? Donald Faison. Directed by Steven Spielberg. That would be awesome.

Donald Faison

#85. Fear may very well be a caveman fear of the predator, of the giant lizard chasing them - maybe that's what Steven Spielberg connects with so well in Lost World.

Oliver Stone

#86. Well, you don't make any demands to Steven Spielberg.

Shia Labeouf

#87. My first teacher was Steven Spielberg. I worked on Amazing Stories. That was my first job, as a writer and as a story editor. Watching him and his command of the tools of filmmaking, and his admiration for writing and the story itself, was the greatest lesson I ever had.

Mick Garris

#88. I want to be host of 'SNL.' I want to work with Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, J.J. Abrams, Emma Stone and Tim Burton, Sean Penn, Cameron Crowe. I want to work with Adam Sandler - he is so funny - and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

David Mazouz

#89. I'm gonna go down in history as being one of the best music men and businessmen in entertainment ... The people that I'm going to be greater than are Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Clive Davis.

Puff Daddy

#90. My craziest on-set story comes from during the Goonies, when I came up to Spielberg and said that I wanted to climb the walls of the tunnels and that it represented my mother's womb, for some odd reason. I was reading Stanislawski at the time and Spielberg's response was "Why don't you just act."

Josh Brolin

#91. On a smash TV series, you make much more money than you ever can in a movie. Do you know how much more Bill Cosby will make than Spielberg? The money for successful television is unbelievable.

Lee Rich

#92. I work with people like Spielberg and Abrams all the time.

Gabriel Basso

#93. Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful.

Francis Ford Coppola

#94. I'm not the most sophisticated person. I'm not the smartest person in the world. But, I know what makes me excited about life, from Spielberg movies to Michael Jackson music videos to cartoons on Saturday mornings, which made my childhood.

Jon M. Chu

#95. Martin Scorsese is doing a 3D movie (Hugo Cabret). A lot of amazing filmmakers are. Not just the obvious of Jim Cameron, but Spielberg is doing it and Peter Jackson has worked in it. In the hands of those types of people, it will just keep getting better and better.

Rob Letterman

#96. If I make two movies my entire life, and they're two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don't need to be Steven Spielberg.

Jodie Foster

#97. I've never met anyone who has convinced me to say, "No, I'm not gonna take the next Spielberg film, I think I'll stay here and have a baby." I've never met anyone of that caliber.

Stephanie Zimbalist

#98. Steven Spielberg's mother, who said to E.T., I don't care where you're from, you're here and you're gonna get bar mitzvahed! Never got a dinner!

Red Buttons

#99. I don't think many people can say they've been the lead in a Spielberg film and still been able to live their normal life that they had before.

Jamie Bell

#100. I'm not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind.

Gene Siskel