Top 1200 Director Quotes & Sayings

I consider myself more a European director who is from Iceland than an Icelandic director.

I pick different projects for different reasons. Usually, it's a combination of things. I admire the director, and I am interested in working with the director. Or, it's the cast. I can be moved by the story. The ideal situation is you love the director and you love the cast.

A director is a director is a director. Man or woman - it doesn't matter.

One of the challenges of being a director is often you don't get to work with your peers. You know, writers can write together, and as a director you get to work with so many wonderful actors and writers and designers. But it's pretty rare that you get a chance to partner in that way with another director.

I have an association that director means total authority. Director means they will never let you down. Director means just trust them and fulfill their vision, and know that the story will be told in its best incarnation.

A strong film director does leave you to your devices. A strong director allows you to be free and you trust that he's there and he will tell you if you've gone too far. A strong director allows you to be much more experimental and take greater chances than a director who isn't secure within himself.

There is always a collaboration between the director and the actors, and you always have to listen as the actors have to listen to you as a director. In the end, you as a director, of course, are the captain on the ship.

I think the director is becoming more important. To work under rushed conditions, you need to have an extremely professional director. If the director's good than the end result will be good.

When you do a rewrite, it's really about serving the director's vision, and what the director needs to go into that script.

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

I have my pride. I'm a director. I'm not going to go and recreate some other director's vision.

With a director it's all about the work; I'd work with a great director over - you know, I'm not the kind of actor who that doesn't go, 'I want to play this role.' It's more like, 'I want to work with this director,' regardless of what the role is because if it's a good director, you'll probably find a good role because it's a decent film. But a mediocre director will always make a mediocre movie.

If a director is really a director, I think he's interested in more than one thing.

I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director or actor-director.

Inarritu's own nomination for Best Director for 'Babel' was the first such honor for a Mexican director.

I think 'director' is a very broad term. I like to think of myself as the head collaborator, not the director, because I think, for a lot of people, 'director' connotes giving orders and telling people what to do.

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

I am a director's actor. It is a director's medium, definitely. That doesn't mean I stop using my head.

I don't see myself as a short-film director, and I'm not a commercial director.

There was a choice of being a director who's more familiar with the technicality of doing a movie, like learning about the camera and filters and setup, or being a director who can actually talk to actors. And I always wanted to be an actor's director.

And also, Sergio Leone was considered in Italy a director of category B, not a big director.

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.

It all has to do with the director, the captain of the ship. He sets the pace, the mood. If the director is quiet, the set is quiet. If the director is loud, then everybody has to be louder to be heard.

Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.

When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects.

I've always laughed at the term "female director" or even "black director." A director's a director.

I don't take anything for granted from any director. I am just a slave of my director.

An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable.

To be a great director, what does it mean exactly? It's not only about a great director, but also about being able to rely on the very special chemistry that goes between them. It not only has to be a great director, but the great director has to make his relationship to you, the actor, very special.

Very often, it's the director that I'm attracted to. If it's a really good director, I don't even have to read the script to say yes.

When you trust the director you want to trust his or her choices. I don't want to say, 'No, I don't like this girl or that guy," when the director really loves them. No, you want to go with what the director likes.

Mel is a great director because he's not just a director, he's an actor, so he knows how to direct actors. I loved working with him. He's great as a director. He's so intelligent. He's generous. I really loved him.

The director's very important to me, particularly when the director has a recognizable style.

I'm just saying to everyone. The director does not direct the trailer. It's an edited version that takes so many moments of the movie, sometimes it's not even in the movie. The director does the movie. So don't judge the director based on the trailer. Please.

I like working with a first time director. I'm more likely to work with a first time director than I am a second time director.

A director is a director. Man or woman should matter little.

Miloš Forman is a great director; Jim Brooks is a wonderful writer and director.

A male director doesn't come to situations the same way that a female director would.

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor. I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director, or actor-director. Writers, directors, actors are all such very different people. I think it's unusual that two of those people are in one human.

People think a director teaches acting. But in good films a director doesn't.

I don't really consider myself a horror director or a violent director at all.

The respect for a musical score must come from the director... If the director has no power and has to surrender to budgetary constraints, this is where we have the problem.

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

It's a dumb question, because I don't look at things as a black director, just as a director, so ask me as a director first and we can segue into the colour thing later.

There is a director for a reason, because a director knows what's best for the movie. You just give your director as much as you can to work with, and hopefully, the decisions they make are going to be great.

From my side, I don't put pressure on the director to cater to a certain image. I am happy to do different films, and I have to stick by my director. I like to completely surrender myself to the director - that way, I think, I don't get to do the similar roles.

A lot of times I don't know if I trust the director to tell that film's story. Or I think it's inappropriate for a male director to tell a female story, or a white director to tell a black story. Everyone walks away from a movie differently, because you're relating it to your own life.

The director has to win, because you should never force a director to shoot something they don't believe in.

I still make more money as I do as an actor than director, however I don't want to be a commercial director.

In Hong Kong, in our generation that started out in the 1970s, being a director wasn't a big deal. We didn't even have director's chairs. We weren't particularly well paid. The social standing of a film director wasn't that high. It was a sort of a plebeian job, a second or third grade one. And the studio heads are always practical, there's never any fawning because someone is a director. There's very little snobbery about one's position as a director. The only ones people treated differently were those that were also stars; or the directors who also owned their companies.

I'm not a great director or an auteur; I'm an ensemble director. I do think I can get wonderful performances out of actors.

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

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.

You can give the greatest performance possible, but if you don't have a director who's pointing the camera in the right direction and an editor who's editing it properly, it doesn't matter what you do. The director and the editor are the most important people. Not the actors. Sometimes the writer is important. But if you don't have a good director, you can't have a good production.

I aspire to be an instrument of the director. I'm happiest like that. The stronger the director, the more I'm willing to give them.

I hope that in another way we can move the need to say, instead of being a Black director, or a woman director, or a French director that I'm just a director.

Any director who comes into a revival owes a great deal to the original director. If I know the backbone works, it gives me, as a director, much more freedom to bring something new to it or try something different.

Your actors need to trust you as a director, but normally, I think you just need to have an open communication between the actors and the director. I think the director needs to really paint his or her vision to the cast and let them know the kind of mood that he or she is making. I think that's very important.

Independent means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist... Whatever word you want. It's where you feel the director, not a machine, at work. It doesn't matter where the money comes from. It matters how much freedom the director has to work with his or her team. That's how I personally define independent movies.

When you're a director you always feel weird with another director watching over your shoulder.