Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.
As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.
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.
All the director wants is their idea of the movie to be believed in.
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?
Actors are almost conditioned to get their director's approval. 'I just did my song and dance, boss. What did you think?' Actors are infantilized so much.
Do you imagine Sergio Leone with a philosophy? Come on! He was a primitive of movies, a great director on set.
I view myself still as a director. That's what I do.
Even with revivals, I don't really pay attention to previous incarnations. I always just go with the script and with the director and am willing to treat it as brand new.
I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, 'Can she play anything other than a drunk?'
Horror movies, man, the blood entails so much time. And horror movies are not fun; definitely not starting there as a director. Definitely not horror.
You know, I love plays. I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director.
George Tenet has been the director of central intelligence since 1997, time enough to have changed the Agency's culture. He has failed. He should go.
In a way, as an actor, you do all the preparation and then you want to forget it and just play the scene. As a director, you can't forget it because somebody will remind you that you forgot something. But you can know your plan well enough that you still have a certain amount of freedom.
A lot of the stuff that's happening now, I can trace back to 'Death of a Salesman.' Francine Maisler, the casting director, saw 'Death of a Salesman' and called me in for 'Unbroken.' The casting director of 'Normal Heart' had seen 'Salesman' too. I look back on it now, and it's like one thing led to another; it was a chain reaction.
The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.
I have worked with a lot of really great women directors: Ana Kokkinos; Cate Shortland, who just recently directed a film called 'Lore;' another director, Rachel Perkins - she's an Aboriginal director, and I've worked with her three times now, and she gave me my first film role, actually, back in 1997.
Theater is very much the world I'd like to get back to, particularly in New York, both as an actor and director.
When I was general director of City Opera, we were pioneers in the practice of projecting supertitles so that American audiences finally could know what all the singing was about.
According to the FBI and the director of national intelligence, Syria's becoming a perfect platform to strike our nation. I've got a very simple strategy as your president against ISIL. Whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat them.
As I told the students every time I visited a campus, you are the director of your own movie, and if you aren't enjoying what you are doing, change it.
To say you want to be a director is to risk sounding obnoxious, pretentious, arrogant, and I think women are more fearful of sounding that way than men are.
I think I always try to be accommodating and open and available and proving for my director. I love to give as many takes as they want. I love to give them as many choices as they want.
I didn't make 'Wild Bill' because I wanted to become a director; I just wanted to make 'Wild Bill.'
I think each character is different for me, but I am a director's actor. So if I get the right vision and right guidance from my director, I think sky is the limit for me.
The director's very important to me, particularly when the director has a recognizable style.
There's this weird thing about acting where you have to wait for somebody to ask you to do it; like you have to wait for a director to say it's okay.
With a novel, you're the director and the screenwriter and everything else, except that you have to write it knowing it will all be performed inside the head of the reader. So it's a difficult and lonely task.
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.
I'm happiest when I can just be a director and watch.
I think today there are too many directors taking themselves seriously; the only one capable of saying anything really new and interesting is Luis Bunuel. He's a very great director.
The problem with independent films is that they can be hit or miss. I've seen scripts that have blown me away. But there have to be all the right ingredients in place to make them work: the director, cast, publicity, distribution.
Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too.
I have an idealistic approach to acting. I want to be great at it, but you can't be great if the scripts are not there and the director doesn't know what he's doing.
I did a Norwegian film called 'Insomnia' that was remade and that was a good remake by a good director, so I'm honoured.
It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't.
