Top 219 Spielberg Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased making films, and Steven Soderbergh - they all have something to say, they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and Magnolia.

There really isn't a dream role, but there's a dream situation where I could work with a director that I idolize. So, the idea of working with David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson or Scorsese or Spielberg or any of the guys I really idolize is a dream for me.

I'm a humorist. A guy like Paul Simon just makes my life so much simpler. When I was there, he had a hearing against hate. Steven Spielberg came and testified against hate. Paul Simon said hate was bad. Orrin Hatch was there, and he was against hate too. Everyone was opposed to hate. Is this really a wonderful way to spend our tax dollars, to have these men drone away about how against hate they are?

Steven Spielberg's name was all over 'Poltergeist,' and 'E.T.' was out the same year, which every single parent took their child to. So despite 'Poltergeist' being a horror movie, I convinced my parents to let me see it. It was terrifying. I guess this says a lot about me as a six-year-old, because I loved it.

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.

So often, in my life, when you play a joke on another actor, you say, 'Hello? Steven Spielberg? It's for you.' What's it feel like? It's bizarre. He feels like he's a friend. He feels like he's some kid in the neighborhood who has a camera and makes films, now and then, and says, 'Would you come 'round and play?' It doesn't feel grand at all.

I think it's good for the fans, as well, because they get to connect with you directly. You know, in the old days, if I wanted to, like, write to (Steven) Spielberg or Sam Raimi or whatever, I'm not sure I could actually write a fan mail and (I'd) have no idea where to actually send it. Nowadays, you can just, like, follow Ashton (Kutcher who still has among the most followers on Twitter) or, like, friend someone, you know, on Facebook, and you can actually just say, "Hey, I like your stuff."

As a kid, I always wanted to be like Spielberg and to make wonderful movies. Even when I was making 'Indiana Jones,' I was looking at how he would come up with these amazing shots and how he would choreograph the blocking and all that. So I knew from early on I would go to film school and try to work behind the camera.

Clint Eastwood is so fair and consistent. It does not matter who he is talking to, he is always nice. It doesn't matter whether he is with a production assistant or Steven Spielberg, he is friendly and never seems superior. I think it is hard for people to realize that he is accessible because they are caught up in the image and can't talk to him because he is 'Clint Eastwood', so they get tongue-tied. They get terrified. It is funny watching people with him.

I must say Steven Spielberg was great to me, and I loved working with him. He called me up on the phone and was like, "I want you to be in this movie - 1941. There are a couple of parts. You can take whichever one you want. One of them is a main character who is involved in everything, and there's another character who has his own storyline and goes off on his own. He's probably the funnier, more unique character." I said, "Well let me do that second one."

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.

[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it.

My strength, if it's anything, is that I can lure some big-name actors in. That's probably the strength of almost any director now. On your own, as a director, you've only got so much weight. James Cameron, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay... that's about it. Everybody else depends on the star power that they can draw.

'Straight Outta Compton' is my first biopic, my first period piece, and I got a chance to kind of get out there like some of my idols, you know, like Scorsese, Spielberg, Spike Lee, the guys who came before me. You know, I'm feeling good about it.

My first time acting for camera really was for Steven Spielberg in War Horse. I was trained in theater and I was actually working in theater at the time. I had a small role with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is a huge prestigious theater company back in England. I honestly thought that was as good as it got.

If you look back at a lot of these Spielberg movies and Stephen King books, even though there's a lot of fun and a lot of camaraderie, there's also a bit of sadness there, whether it's 'E.T.' with the divorce or in Stephen King's 'It,' where there's racism. There's always some sort of evil - there's sadness and people aren't happy.

I don't know when the last time was that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas made a movie with Universal, but I can tell you that Universal is leading the charge. They're looking at film differently. They're planning ahead in a way that I've never seen a studio do before. They're believing in a relationship between fan and film franchise, in a new way. They're more receptive to an audience, in part because of social media, in a way we've never been allowed.

My casting in 'Halo' produced by Steven Spielberg, which I am doing, is just color-blind casting; Asians have been questioning why best roles should not come to them and I am so happy about this color-blind casting. I am going to be just what I am in that film.

I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in.

Jim Henson once allowed me to visit the Muppets on set and spent an entire day showing me how he and the other puppeteers performed Kermit and all the characters! After that, I was lucky enough to work with both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on many fun animation projects and learned so much from them.

Steven Spielberg making a Ready Player One movie is going to change the course of human history as pertains to how quickly virtual reality is adopted. He's going to shows the whole world the potential of VR, which is one of the reasons I think he's doing it. Once you have to compose for 360 degrees, and a movie is different every time you watch it depending on where you choose to look, it's like the dawn of a new era.

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.

Steven's Spielberg is one of the most visually talented and character-oriented directors I've ever worked with. And I learn from him every time I watch one of his movies. Good or bad - and he has made some awful movies - they're never uninteresting. He's made four or five of the greatest movies of all time. Perfect movies, like E.T. or Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan.

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.

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.

Guys like Spielberg and Zemeckis and really anybody who is a storyteller-filmmaker today has studied Hitchcock and the way he visually tells a story. He was the master of suspense, certainly, but visually you would get a lot of information from what he would do with the camera and what he would allow you to see as the story was unfolding.

I enjoyed being at Jurassic Park, with Jeff Goldblum and Sir Richard Attenborough. It's funny, because Steven Spielberg would actually operate the camera sometimes. He'd consider the camera, and he'd be kind of looking at me. He actually shot a few of the things that I'm in, in that lab, with that long ash dangling off that cigarette. Hogging that fake cigarette. Because I had quit smoking, and he wanted to make sure I didn't go back, so he got me the worst-tasting fake cigarettes ever.

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.

I came out of film school and went after movies that I thought audiences wanted to see or that the studios wanted, as opposed to the movies that I wanted. Over the last 10 years, I've gravitated more and more toward the films that I grew up loving - classic Spielberg, Lucas, James Cameron and Ridley Scott movies.

Very early on, I was writing stories, and I was amazed at Spielberg's movies when I was young. Coming from the countryside, I was so impressed with the way he was able to tell stories and the way he was able to deal with le merveilleux - the wonders. Very quickly, he became for me a massive hero, and he introduced me to the world of a director.

So many of Spielberg's films inspired my imagination growing up. And then there are British films like 'The Full Monty' and 'Waking Ned Devine' that took me to places I really loved, with characters I just thought were amazing. But the films of Luc Besson showed me France - a really cool side of France.

Look at the list of liberals who are active in politics, if not running. Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Warren Beatty, Springsteen, Spielberg... And then you look at the conservatives, it's like Chuck Norris, Bo Derek and the Gatlin Brothers. I don't know if being liberal makes you more right, but it does seem like it makes you more talented.

Martin Scorcese is probably America's greatest living director, and while he is not a titan like John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Federico Fellini, he is certainly consistently more interesting than Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen. Even a failure like Gangs of New York or a curiosity like The Aviator is more interesting and ambitious than Munich, The Black Dahlia or Scoop.

Suddenly people were saying I was cocky because I'd done a Steven Spielberg movie and thought I was better than everyone else, which surprised me at first. I suddenly started feeling like a freak because everyone was treating me differently. It was confusing, and I did wonder if acting was for me anymore.

I do get in the water, but I was ruined by 'Jaws' 'cause I saw it when I was 13. Before that, I used to get in the water everywhere and never thought twice about it. After watching 'Jaws,' I was scared of the water. I have Steven Spielberg to thank for giving me another phobia.

When I won the Oscar, I fell into that mind-set that this is a precious role. People everywhere were shouting, 'Show me the money!' I just didn't want anything that could parody the fact that I was like a tagline in a movie. So when Steven Spielberg offered me 'Amistad,' I said no; when 'Hotel Rwanda' came along, I said no.

I've been very lucky and fortunate to meet people that are very inspirational in their spirits, too, and not just as filmmakers - in their personal life. I mean, Steven Spielberg is very inspirational just to sit down and talk for an hour, like Ingmar Bergman was. They know so much about life and, you know, movie-making, so it's just wonderful to be around those people.

Occasionally I do movies with other directors. I did 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' for Julian Schnabel. I did a movie with Jim Brooks ('How Do You Know'). I did a movie with Judd Apatow ('Funny People'). So I do get a chance to work with other people, which is always enjoyable, always pleasant. But still, Steven [Spielberg] makes the types of movies that I'm interested in as well.

I was very blessed it was Steven Spielberg who made the movie. He was very much into the redemption side of the story. They asked him in an interview why he had owned the rights to this story for 20 years before he made the movie, and he said, 'I wanted to see what the real Frank Abagnale did with his life before I immortalised him on film.'