Eric Balfour Quotes

Well, I'm directing a lot of television these days.

In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

It's a great luxury for me to be able to write on the films that I direct, and kind of a nice thing to be able to write enough to get credit, which is difficult for a director.

I'd love to be a director-for-hire and get a nice paycheck and captain one of those big ships, but I think studios mistakenly think I want to write what I direct - which I don't. I write out of desperation, because I never get a script I like, other than "Nebraska." It's a matter of: What's the screenplay? Is it intelligent? Is it human? I don't care what genre, what scale. I'm here for the movies.

I first came to cinema as a passionate filmgoer, when I was a child. Then, when I was a very young man, I became a film critic precisely because of my knowledge of cinema. I did better than others because of this. Then I moved on to screenwriting. I wrote a film with Sergio Leone, 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' And then I moved to directing.

I'd love to direct more.

You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.

Long before I ever started acting, believe it or not, I always knew I wanted to be a director.

I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.

Director of any film is very important, and an actor has to leave himself in his hands to mould.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

I want to act for the rest of my life - and I also want to pursue directing. Watching Bill Condon direct 'Twilight' kind of made me think, 'OK yeah, I really want to do this now.' This idea that you can make an image in your head and be in full control of how it comes out - I thought that was really cool.

I can't see myself being a television director unless it's for a two-hour movie.

I really only worked for about a month on 'Meatballs.' What happened was that Ivan Reitman figured out that studios wanted to meet everybody involved with 'Animal House' except the producer. So he thought he'd better start directing.

Maybe at 55, I would like to direct. I will go the Angelina Jolie way.

I'd been acting since I was a teenager. I'd come to the point where I was writing my own movies of the week for TV. That was fun.

I spent most of my time as an actor in television, so directors in television - it's such a machine that's already in place that I don't think you notice the direction as much on the set.

I feel like I don't have much of a preference. With TV, it's just a longer process, so you need to be more sure that you really want to be involved in it for a longer time than you would be with film.

I'm happy directing films. On television, the direction takes your entire life away.

I've learned more about directing from five years of television than I could have in ten years of film.

I went to film school to direct.

Ultimately, I want to direct a movie, so that's another thing, too, where I wonder what that will look like and how will I be able to manage.

I think it seems like a natural progression to go into directing, and I hope to explore more of it, because it's very exciting and a really good way to collide all the things that you've known and experienced in the business and put them all into one.

I'm not really a guy who wants to be a director, anyway.