Natalie Portman Quotes

There's a different energy with a female director, a female at the head of the production. I don't prefer one over the other, but they're definitely different experiences, and I would love to have more of them.

When people think of diversity, they think people of color, but it also means women, who are severely underrepresented as directors, writers and producers.

I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors.

I've had really great experiences working with first-time directors. They come at filmmaking with fresh ideas. I've been very lucky that way.

I don't understand why there aren't more powerful female directors. I don't have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material.

This business is based on numbers, and the numbers show that it's worth investing in female-driven and female-directed films.

I have worked with three female first assistant directors - on 'Hostiles,' 'Gone Girl,' and a short film, 'The Human Voice,' and they have all been exceptional.

I've just seen that there is a really amazing perspective that we're missing by not having more women directing.

I didn't really realize I was a woman director until I walked onto the set at Pinewood Studios when I did 'Mamma Mia!' and everybody was calling each other 'Governor' and 'Sir'... and then, looking at me, 'Well... good morning!'

When I was an undergraduate in Film & TV at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, most of the projects I shot had male directors, and only a few had female directors.

I'm not interested in making movies only with female protagonists. I think it's ridiculous to think that a female director can't direct men. That makes no sense to me.

I love working with women - I love women - and we need more women directors. We need more feminine sensibilities in movies.

Wayne Wang, the director, really helped me become a more mature actress. When I first started filming, I was really over the top. He just helped bring me down and make me real. That was really wonderful, a really wonderful experience. Also, what I learned about filming is it takes forever. I mean, there are so many different angles and shots. I mean, it just takes forever.

It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later.

I want to see more women behind the scenes.

I think I did fifteen long features and fifteen documentaries, or something like this, which is very little when you think of people making a film every year. Some people have done fifty or sixty films.

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.

The first film I directed (Explicit Ills), I did when I was like 27 years old. I had been an actor for a certain amount of time, and then I was like, "I want to start directing."

With the young generation, there are even more women than men making movies right now.

I can make films. And some of them come out good, and some of them come out better, and some of them come out worse. But I've been very lucky over the years to be able to sustain the length of career that I've had.

I've done a lot of things I cringe when I watch and some things I'm proud of... Movies are strange. You have to be a little bit lucky with them.

In the 10 years that I've been a professional filmmaker, the film part of the film industry is really disappearing, right in front of our eyes.

Carrie was a pretty big-budget movie at a real studio, with a director that had already done a bunch of things and had some notoriety, and Stephen King was the writer. He was banned from the set, but that was kind of an A-plus production. So that was my first experience.

I've had the chance to work with some really good filmmakers. It's put me in a situation where I've been surrounded by great actors, and for me it's been a lot about standing in the background and watching people work.

I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.