Julia Ormond Quotes

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

You have to remain strong. That's the kind of filmmaker I want to encourage. Orson Welles was the one who said, you know, you can learn anything you need to know about filmmaking- that's camera, sound, celluloid, video at this point- in four hours. It has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with it... It has to do with what you want to say. If you feel you have something to say, you'll find that way to get it said, on film, and not let anyone or anything chip away at that or tarnish it, because it's something special and precious.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.

I like directing. It takes a lot out of you, but I'd like to do it again - I just have to find a story I want to tell.

Things develop in front of my camera, and then I will try to do the best out of it. I am close, but in most of the scenes, I am trying not to be seen. I think that's the trick. I think it starts in your heart, goes to the head, and the head puts it into the finger.

All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.

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.

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.

The truth is, when I started to make films, I was terrified. I had a huge difference in what I was writing in the screenplay and what was on the screen after. Sometimes there was a big gap. Now, the more I have experienced, the more I do movies, the more I feel that the dream is closer to the screen. It's coming with experience.

I love making movies. But it's a lot of investing your heart and soul. It can be exhausting.

I read an interview with Mark Wahlberg, and he was like, 'I might read a script and love it, but it's all about the filmmaker.' I think that's a good lesson for me.

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins.

I'm not the kind of director who aims to send a message out.

I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.

So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.

I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene.

I'm an actor first and foremost. My producing credentials are just to say, 'Yeah, I love this story and now let's bring the people, the ensemble together,' and I get out of the way. I have no desire to check on schedules and shooting schedules and money and stuff like that.

I honestly never wanted to direct. It was only when I started to work on 'Alexander the Great' that I realized I had to direct. I saw something so specifically in my mind, I could not leave it to someone else.

I love acting and I still want to do it, but I've such an instinct for directing, it's something that comes naturally to me. It's why I'm here on this planet.

When you're a director, you really live whatever you do.

Once I've finished a film I just want to get on and make another one.

When I made my first film, I didn't think of it as directing, so it wasn't like I set out to become a director.