When you get a good script, and the director gives you proper lines, half your job is done.
Richard Lester is a wonderful director, a great comedy director, of course.
Musically, I wear many hats. I'm the social media director. I conceptualise the videos, write the songs, do the press. I'm not a major label act.
J. J. Abrams is a director that I've admired for a long time, from the very first scripts he wrote - including 'Regarding Henry,' which I was in.
I got a chance to work with so many stalwarts from British cinema. Judi Dench, of course, who is a legend. Then there was my director Stephen Frears. He is the man who made some of British cinema's salient trendsetters.
Acting is about animality. It's great to be allowed to be animal. But I feel more alive as a director. Every morning, I have to write.
That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.
Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn't just a director. He's potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.
My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director.
I'm such a fan of Daniel Waters, who wrote the script, and also Mark Waters, his brother, who directed. 'Vampire Academy' has, I think, an iconic director.
The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer's script and actors' performances.
I couldn't be a director because I couldn't put up with the actors. I don't have the patience. Why, I'd probably kill the actors. Not to mention some of the beautiful actresses.
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.
What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It's my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.
There has never been a female director who has won an Oscar. There has only been one woman who won at the Cannes Film Festival.
Hawks is great, 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre,' 'The Big Sleep'... He could do the Salt-of-the-Earth very well. He was a very smooth director; a very good film architect in terms of his storytelling.
I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I could make $3000' and he hired me for commercials, short films, like 15 jobs in a row.
I believe the director is the one that sets the mood and if you have this hysterical director it's a domino effect. I would work for him forever, for nothing. Don't tell my agent that.
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.
I think drug movies free the director to make intense films.
I have the soul of a director.
How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.
I mean, I've sold all these scripts and nothing's been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don't get made.
Nobody taught Picasso how to paint - he learned for himself. And nobody can teach you to be a producer. You can learn the mechanics, but you can't learn what's right about a script or a director or an actor. That comes from instinct and intuition. It comes from inside you.
I used to take it personally when a casting director didn't like me or I didn't get picked for something. Now I realize you can't do that. It'll mess with your self-esteem. Don't take rejection overly personally. If that doesn't work out, there's something else waiting for you.
There's people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you're compassionate.
I've worked with some of the great cinematographers. So I'm always watching what they do and I'm watching how the director composes his shots, just because I find it interesting as an actor; you're trying to help them out as well.
The film is a direct mirror of the director. If your director doesn't know how to dress, there will be an aesthetic of the film that won't come through - whether it's in the costumes if he doesn't know exactly what he wants or the look of the film.
I grew up thinking anything was possible simply because of seeing women in power - like, you know, running the country. Which is a thought that continues to give Americans indigestion... Direction is about having a vision, but the practice of being a director is a con game - a confidence game.
I've always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pomposity. Starting when I was 30, I somehow gave off an impression at an audition that had them mentally put me in a three-piece suit or put an attache case in my hand. If there was a stiff-guy part, the director would brighten up when I came in.
Now, I have big-money offers on three movies, and I have director approval. That's kind of scary,' he says. 'No directors have been attached. That's a lot of pressure on me.
You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.
One guy records the voices, another guy times the storyboard, another guy times the sheets, one guy is the story editor. All these jobs should be covered by the director.
I've definitely had a bunch of action scripts sent to me, but again I'm a stickler for directors. If it's, like, an action flick with a great director, then it's like, 'Oh let's look at this thing,' but if it's just like a shoot-em'-up with a first time director, I don't know if that's the trajectory I want to take with what I'm doing.
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.
You can be playing a line some way and the director wants you to change that, or you can disagree. But I always think that the creative conversation between director and actor is what leads to good work.
