Jason Priestley Quotes

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

Whenever I've directed something, there's this feeling of demand and focus that I like.

As a director, I get to have a much broader creative expression than as an actress.

Being a director is almost like being another sort of character, but you're out of view.

Directing is a unique endeavor where you are in charge of so many people. As a writer, it is sort of the opposite.

There is an isolated experience to being a director. It's very communal because there's a crew, but it's only you. You're the one on the hook.

For me, acting is like a holiday. When you're directing, you have a strong sense of responsibility for others. It's exciting but exhausting, especially when you're like me: always wanting to break the rules.

For me, I had to overcome shyness to be an actor. But as a director, you lose your subjectivity, your self-consciousness. And instead of just your role, it's the life of the whole play that becomes a reflection of you.

For me, the most important thing is the writing - and certainly the director. But if the writing isn't there, it doesn't matter who the director is!

Directing feels great; I'm really happy to be doing this.

Just to get the basic fundamentals and empathy - I think that's the most important thing to bring to it if you've acted in the past and are now a director: the empathy.

Photography is a pursuit that allows you to be very hands-on with what you show people of either yourself or the art you want to make, and acting is kind of the exact opposite. You do have a modicum of creative freedom as an actor, but you're still very much a cipher for other people's art.

As a director, people are trusting you with their lives, with their stories.

When you're directing something, you absolutely have to be involved in all layers of the process.

I've always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he's been in front of the camera. He doesn't have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

I don't think I know enough about acting to direct. You need to be a slight megalomaniac, not where you want to take over the world, but where you want to make every single decision and the buck stops with you. It's an awful lot of stress.

When you are acting, you are just one piece of the puzzle. You don't see how everything fits together. It feels like you have less authorship over the entire product. In directing, you take the entire picture into account, so you're challenged in a different way.

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.

I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.

I wouldn't want to direct - I think that's a very different job. You have to be a very specific type of person to do that.

Sometimes it's less about the character and more about the story for me. I'll play a rock in the background if I think the story is fantastic and I can be a part of it somehow. That's what I look for.

All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.

I've certainly worked with really great directors who haven't acted.

I really want to work in a movie with Quentin Tarantino. I think he makes fantastic movies. I love people that create a different reality for the actors to live in.

I appreciate my role as an actor much more after I direct because it's just easier.