Jodie Foster Quotes

I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?

We like movies and books that give us this emotionally moving experience, where you feel like a slightly different person, and you see the world a little different after you finish. It lets you see your own life in a different way, and it actually makes you feel really good.

You become the movie you are making.

I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.

I'll be honest: 'Badlands' changed my life: it really did rewire my brain as to how film can operate.

Early on, many years ago when we started 'Avatar,' the executive that we were working with said to make the sad scenes sadder, the funny scenes funnier, the scary scenes scarier. That was kind of permission to do what we felt comfortable with.

I like to make films where I learn along the way, like the audience.

Always when you are doing films, the themes swallow you in one way or another.

All the director wants is their idea of the movie to be believed in.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillful, he will flatter them into thinking: 'Why, that's us up there, and aren't we - for all our little foibles - pretty nice guys and gals?'

Sure, you always put some of your own experience into a film.

To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.

It is rare that you read scripts that genuinely move you and make you feel that, regardless of the commercial possibilities, you have to make the film.

I was an insecure kid. Once I saw 'Hercules' with Steve Reeves, it completely changed my life. If I had never gone to that film, I wouldn't be here today.

The privilege I've had as a curator is not just the discovery of new works... but what I've discovered about myself and what I can offer in the space of an exhibition - to talk about beauty, to talk about power, to talk about ourselves, and to talk and speak to each other.

Ultimately, it has been a struggle- but I was in Minneapolis and Austin a couple of weeks ago, sitting in theaters with complete strangers watching this weird movie that Kirk and I thought up and I was excited to be making film.

A film has its own life and takes its own time.

Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it's a small change or a big change but you know there's novels I've read or a scene in a film that I've seen where I definitely inspired something and made a change or addressed an issue in my life or done something cliche like make a phone call.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

'Control' had to do with my own life a lot, and that's why that seemed to be a film I could be the director of, because I had an emotional attachment to the whole story. And because of that experience, I feel that I can try other films. I didn't set out to become a director.

One day, when I was 33, I shifted. I suddenly saw acting as a higher calling. I understood that my goal was to serve the play. And I realized if an actor can make audiences' hearts resonate or make them question their values - that's an important thing to do!

When you produce and direct, your movies are different to you. They're not just something you act in.

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.

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.