Melissa Leo Quotes

I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology.

Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them.

I've got a big closet of scripts, and a big stack of scripts on the side of my desk, because you get a whole bunch. Nothing's going to be perfect, and I realize that; but I am a perfectionist, so you go through a lot of stuff.

I don't have a stack of scripts that, when I get home, studios are clamoring, saying, 'Has Bob read ours yet?'

My dad's got a brilliant eye for scripts 'cos he's a literary agent. He and my agent read a load of scripts and filter them.

I have a stack of scripts that I've read - I'm in the lucky position where I get offered things - but I haven't wanted to direct many of them.

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.

Most of the scripts that land on my desk are stuff you read and go, 'Is someone really gonna make this?'

You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I've rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.

Once, I had so many scripts coming to me that I could hardly read them all.

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

I've received some English-speaking scripts, but I was not interested in them.

You read a million scripts during pilot season, and most of them are not very good, so the good ones really shine.

I'm still fighting for parts - it's not like I'm sitting with a big pile of scripts putting them in a 'yes' and 'no' pile.

I get sent a lot of scripts where you're just the mom.

Whenever I hear the narration for a new film, I have this process back home where my mother reads all my scripts.

I have a pile of scripts at home that I love. Some of them are hard to get made. We have to give up stuff. It's hard to get movies made.

It's very hard to get a movie made. You could spend your life reading scripts that never got made.

I read a lot of scripts. Most of 'em go to other actors.

When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.

Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn't going to work.

I have a tendency to say yes to a script or no to a script. Not yes based on a rewrite.

Every time you say yes to a film there's a certain percentage of your yes that has to do with the director, a certain percentage to do with the story, a certain percentage with the character, the location, etc.

When I got the script for Memento, I read it and I got killed off on page one and I fired my agent.

I'm a reader. I found out that, whether you're a studio head or a director, you must read your own material. You can't rely on readers.