Mani Ratnam Quotes

I see my actors as my collaborators.

I view the whole thing as a collaboration. As an actor, I always found that to be the most freeing thing, when the director would collaborate with you, so that together you'd come up with something exponentially better.

I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.'

I think most co-directors and co-writers just hold hands.

No one person is the author of a Bourne film. The truth is it's a coalition of people who share the same vision for Bourne and his world, and we... its remarkably collaborative and collective.

Musicals are very collaborative. Unless you find somebody who wants to do something with you and has equal commitment, it's not going to work.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

I like working with Kenneth Branagh.

To work with the same director is a great feeling.

Actors and directors work on things together. That's how I like to work, anyway. I don't want to be told what to do. I want to share it with someone and work it out together.

There's a synergy with Dre and me.

I just believe in collaboration. I mean, I've written songs on my own, you know, but I think if the artist has something to bring to the table - someone like Pink, for instance - where they have something to say, it makes your job easier and more special.

A film is not done by one person. It's done by a lot of people. I love this whole collaborative aspect. When it works well, you end up with something better than any of us started out to do.

I like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.

Movies are a collaboration, I feel, so I didn't think of myself as an authoritative figure as much.

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

When you work with somebody else, you automatically get a mixed voice. You hope it will benefit the story. But you don't know what the result will be.

And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made.

Sometimes the creating that we do is creating a platform that allows other creative people to pitch in.

You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it.

I write by myself initially. That's the way I've always written, just working on pure thought by myself. Then I bring it to the table with whoever I'm collaborating with.

In effect, I feel like a blind, deaf, and illiterate person working through the sensibilities and multiple, real talents of other people. Everything I do is collaborative.

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

I actually like the collaboration of working with different artists.

I am very clear that when I work with a director what he or she says is the last word.