Writer And Director Quotes

#1. My film school is making movies. But, I do think that being an actor has served me immensely, as both a writer and director, in terms of knowing what is playable and what will be fun to play, for actors, and also how to communicate to actors on set, and not screw them up and get them in their head.

Josh Radnor

#2. I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.

Alan Alda

#3. 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

#4. As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?

Federico Fellini

#5. I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.

Todd Solondz

#6. When you do improv, you're everything. You're a performer, writer, and director, because you're moving the scene in the direction you want it to go, you're making it up as you go, and you're acting it.

Rob Reiner

#7. I'm a performer, comedian, entertainer, writer and director.

William Shatner

#8. I was trained to serve the writer and director as an actor before I serve myself. Not to say that's gotten in my way, but that's a different way of working than most American actors work.

Robert Englund

#9. I want to try and be instinctive as a writer and director.

Andrea Arnold

#10. I kind of romanticized what it was like to be a writer and director when I was in my early twenties. Working as a production assistant knocked that right out of me.

Bill Hader

#11. Milos Forman is a great director, Jim Brooks is a wonderful writer and director.

Twyla Tharp

#12. I spent all my time on my movies worried that people were eating and that the schedule was being kept, so to have experts in those areas giving me the brain space as a writer and director is huge.

Lena Dunham

#13. Really, I am entirely material driven. If a project appeals to me, I will try to find the right writer and director. And that may be someone I've worked with before, or it may not. It may be a woman, or it may not.

Alison Owen

#14. I'm a writer and director. And the movie I've seen a million times is 'Coming Home,' directed by Hal Ashby and starring Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern.

Jonathan Levine

#15. I knew that I always wanted to be a filmmaker, an actor, a writer and a director, that was always my plan.

Jaime King

#16. I'm not only a writer, but have directed and produced, know the difficulties of the line producer, can deal with the studio, can talk with the director and get his or her vision and help exact that. I think it just gives you more tools.

John Lee Hancock

#17. I think one of the reasons movies are the quintessential modern art form is that it is partially a business. The director needs a crew - the writer, the producer, etcetera - and to have that, he needs money.

Roger Corman

#18. I pay tribute to the writing always. The writer is a creative artist and the director is an interpretive artist and the actors are interpretive. You take zero and make it into something, that's always amazing to me.

Clint Eastwood

#19. One of the things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It's your voice that's important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay can't be the same. It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you're the writer and the director.

Quentin Tarantino

#20. Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino makes zombie movies, which probably comes as a surprise to him. At the center of his best and most recent pictures are the walking dead, characters in a race with themselves across mortality's finish line, their spirits arriving before the rest of them.

Steve Erickson

#21. The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them ... no one else is writing them for me.

Cary Fukunaga

#22. I've written a lot of scripts that someone else directed, and it's absolutely vital that, if I'm gonna act in it, then I have to take off the writer hat and let the director direct.

William H. Macy

#23. It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me.

Mary Harron

#24. '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

#25. With 'Moreau,' it's been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story.

Richard Stanley

#26. I don't move until an actor is happy, but it was very important to me as a so-called "first time director" to keep the machine moving. It was especially important to me to keep it moving and not be some kind of precious writer-director.

William Monahan

#27. I've always noticed a difference between working with a director and working with a writer/director. In how much they're invested and how specific they are.

Nathan Fillion

#28. 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

#29. The writer must be a participant in the scene ... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

Hunter S. Thompson

#30. As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.

Nicholas Meyer

#31. 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

#32. As a writer, you have to be willing to kill your darlings, and I'm a writer first. As a director, I've got no problem cutting the scenes.

David Ayer

#33. I have immense admiration for the writer/directors and director/actors who just seamlessly do both jobs at the same time.

Jim Piddock

#34. I don't worry about what everyone wants to see. I make movies that please a writer, director and myself. I always think there are enough people smart as me and sensitive as me.

Saul Zaentz

#35. I read that John Hughes script for 'Mr. Mom,' and I thought, 'This guy is a funny writer.' I went: 'You ought to stick around and direct this thing.' But he didn't; he left, and look what he became. A really legendary comedy director.

Michael Keaton

#36. I had to battle it out with all the usual suspects and whatnot and go to the callback. I was lucky that (writer-director) John (Levine) and I were sort of these two white-boy hip-hop-heads from New York. I think that alone got me in the door.

Josh Peck

#37. When I do any stand-up, you're the writer, director, and producer. You're alone.

Andrew Dice Clay

#38. Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.

Danny Meyer

#39. I mean, I'm a writer, actor, AND director. Not to rock the boat or anything, but compare that to a carpenter and, in the end, who is the better man?

Zach Braff

#40. As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.

J.J. Abrams

#41. I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.

Anthony Minghella

#42. One of the things that takes a bit of getting used to on an American series is having a different director, and often writer, every week.

Gina Bellman

#43. I wouldn't not want to be a director and write as I wouldn't not to want to be a writer and direct movies.

Walter Hill

#44. I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.

Michael Emerson

#45. 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

#46. I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.

Gene Wilder

#47. It's a writer's or director's role to be cerebral, whereas for an actor it should be a visceral, gut thing. When the action starts, it's best to turn the brain off and let it become an instinctual thing.

Natalie Dormer

#48. Your life experience is a moving picture, of which you are writer, director, performer, producer and critic.

T.F. Hodge

#49. If my penis were a writer/director, it would be Woody Allen - small, neurotic, and, frankly, hit or miss.

Matthew Norman

#50. My dad is a successful television producer, director and writer and my mom's a director and writer.

Troian Bellisario

#51. Unless you're playing a historical figure, a writer or director can change their minds. And sometimes your job is to make them change their minds - to make them believe that you're the one that can do it.

Timothy Simons

#52. Actors are accustomed to doing exactly what the director or writer requests us to do, and rarely get involved in that part of the process.

Catherine McCormack

#53. It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out, during the process.

Mark Consuelos

#54. It is perfectly possible to be a professional director or a professional writer and not to be an artist: merely a sort of executor of other people's ideas.

Andrei Tarkovsky

#55. I wanted to be a director and producer and writer, but in the early '40's the union wouldn't let you get through the gates. You couldn't get on a crew, or even learn to direct.

Larry Buchanan

#56. One has the responsibility to oneself, to the writer, director and the people who put up the money, to put out the best of what one has experienced and understood about the human condition as it relates to the role one has been hired to portray.

Tom Skerritt

#57. In creating music you are the writer, the director, the producer, you create it from scratch. Obviously in playing a role in a film, you take guidance and put your trust into the director. You come into it and you really trust people.

Justin Timberlake

#58. 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

#59. Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over.

B.J. Novak

#60. I've always been a huge fan of Patricia's [Rozema ], as a director and as a writer, and she's a friend. For me, Patricia is one of those people who can cross genre in a way that I think has been pretty incredible, if you look at her career and the versatility of her work.

Ellen Page

#61. I always go back to the original material. I want a good connection as the composer and writer of the score to the director and to the source material. It's really important.

Howard Shore

#62. Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?

Orson Welles

#63. I love working with actors. I love visual things. I always intended to be a writer who directs and a director who writes.

Charlie Kaufman

#64. When I do a film, usually I work from my director. That's my boss. The director is interpreting the writer's vision, and we all interpret it, and they create their own vision as well.

Juliette Lewis

#65. With comedy especially, it feels like such a clear-cut thing to be a writer-director. There is so much nuance and tone in a comedy that it's hard to contextualise it in a script.

Todd Phillips

#66. You go to New York or L.A., and every waiter wants to be a writer, director or actor. But there's a common thread: everybody wants to do it because they love it.

Gillian Alexy

#67. Every time I make an American film I just trust the American director and American writer. Myself, I would never make this kind of film. For me, those kinds of films are ridiculous. They don't make sense.

Jackie Chan

#68. I've learned over the years that the best way to develop as an artist is to make things. So I tell young artists it's not enough to be an actor anymore, you have to be a filmmaker/writer/director. There's no excuse for waiting around for a job. You have to be active and make things.

Liane Balaban

#69. But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

Taylor Hackford

#70. I started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.

Chadwick Boseman

#71. If you are the writer/director especially, no one cares more about the project than you do. You know it in and out. You created it. So always listen to input but don't be afraid to veto and fight decisions that you know instinctively are wrong.

Zoe Cassavetes

#72. With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.

George R R Martin

#73. Clark Gregg and I are around the same age. He has been an actor and is a writer. But with a first-time director, there is a way to talk about things they might not know. Because Clark was an actor, though, he knew more about the process than most first-time directors.

Sam Rockwell

#74. Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

Preston Sturges

#75. I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.

Mike Mills

#76. Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.

Albert Brooks

#77. One of the things that's awesome about being an actor is that you get to do stories, live lives and have experiences that you never could have even conceived of, and that's because you're living in another writer's imagination and another director's imagination.

Brit Marling

#78. It's madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.

Peter Morgan

#79. If I have enough ego to say I'm a writer, a director, a producer, and an actor, I should have the energy and the knowledge to write a scene for this great actor named Henry Fonda and direct him in it and have it work.

Peter Fonda

#80. Pretty much, the writer's in charge in theater. Of course you're in charge with the director, but no one can change your words. People can give you notes, but you don't have to take them. In Hollywood you take them and you cash your check and that's your job. It's very different.

David Lindsay-Abaire

#81. I wasn't trained as a writer-director. And the projects I write are difficult to finish.

Ziad Doueiri

#82. I don't think film is the writer's medium, and so I was interested to see what a director would do with it.

Daniel Handler

#83. I always feel that if you put me in a room with a director and a writer and let me talk about the script, I can give a good account of myself.

Daniel Radcliffe

#84. I believe that as a writer and a director, you're only providing the skeleton of a character, and you're hiring actors to fill it out.

Christopher McQuarrie

#85. I detest producing. I mean, I feel like I do it to enable myself to do all the other stuff that I do love, but I find it's in conflict with the other roles because the producer needs to be the one who says "No" and the director and the writer need to let their mind be free.

Julie Davis

#86. I did a play in New York at the public theater, a Shakespeare play, and M. Night Shyamalan, who is the writer/director of 'The Village,' came and saw me in the play and asked to go to lunch afterwards.

Bryce Dallas Howard

#87. The whole thing with comedy is that you are always in control. Writer, director, actor, producer, and sometimes bouncer. And you are just a piece of their puzzle.

Dane Cook

#88. 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

#89. In acting, you have a writer, a director, a character - you're working through being another person - and the irony I always tell people is when I acted early on as a teenager, it actually kept me out of trouble.

Juliette Lewis

#90. The hardest thing for everyone, for the writer, for the director and certainly for the actors, is not to panic when they're doing a certain line for the tenth time because everything ceases to be funny after it's been repeated.

Ivan Reitman

#91. I wanted to work on a cable show and with a writer/director because that's a much more fulfilling and freeing experience, as an actor.

Tom Ellis

#92. I'm always looking for opportunities, even when they're not offered to me. I will have no hesitation to pick up the phone and call a director or call a writer.

Hilary Swank

#93. In comics, the writer is also the director in a certain way. So if this were a film, you wouldn't tell the cinematographer to make a good fight scene while you go and get a cup of coffee.

Max Bemis

#94. It's always different, depending on the writer and the director. A collaborator like Graham Reznick delivers a fully finished piece, perfected in every way. Other writers direct the recording session and then leave quite a bit of the work to us.

Larry Fessenden

#95. I still can't quite believe it. Although there was something about the fact that it was a first-time writer, a first-time producer, and a first-time director all at the same time.

Sam Mendes

#96. I have been working in television for quite a long time. In television, the writer is the constant, and the director is rotated in and out. I am very use to dealing with people's methods. And perspectives.

Melissa Rosenberg

#97. Truth be told, I didn't want to be on T.V. I was going to be a writer or producer or a director, and at the end of my sophomore year, my department chairman put me up for a job doing weekend weather in Syracuse, New York.

Al Roker

#98. When you're the director and the writer, you never have to remember your lines, and there's no one to call you on it. On Garden State I did different lines on every take, just making crap up. And it was great each time.

Zach Braff

#99. I'm fairly competant as a director and actor, but I am Mr. Neurotic as a writer. I just don't have enough confidence in my abilities to take criticism well. I take it personally. Start with 'It's a masterpiece,' and then tell me what you think could be changed.

Tim Robbins

#100. And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made.

Robert Towne