Harold Prince Quotes

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.

I think - more than anything, I think I'd really like to start producing and be in charge of the stuff that I want to see in the world and the stuff that interests me.

For me, to be perfectly honest, the part of my brain that was stimulated by directing was much more exciting than a typical day of acting.

The whole time I've been an actor, from early in Houston, my goal has been to work - to keep doing it. I feel at my most satisfied as a human being when I'm working on a role.

Definitely directing is the thing I like the most because this is where everything you know can be used. It's the most personal process ever. It's the most demanding one, but again, rewarding.

I'm not like one of those actors who's a frustrated director.

When I act, I feel like I am a color in someone else's painting - I can be the best blue that there is, but I'm still only part of their entire picture - but, with music, when I am performing with Reserved For Rondee, I am the painter, you know?

I've had some success at writing and directing, and I like it. It's infinitely more creative than just acting, and I have things I want to say and do.

Acting's incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn't feel quite enough. I've also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can't think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.

To have the privileged position of being the guy who is responsible for shaping the entire experience for an audience as opposed to being just one instrument in that orchestra, being an actor, it's all-encompassing.

I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.

For me, being a complete artist means not necessarily just being in front of the camera, but being behind the camera or being the originator or creator of something.

I'm not always the first person to run out and see something I'm in. I don't know; for me, that's not why I did it. I did it because I wanted to act. I don't really think about the end result. I don't feel like I have to see it - for me, it already happened.

I am always talking to students and telling them how you have to practice every day because you can't wait for someone to hire you. You need something you do for yourself, something that feeds your creative life.

I'm working for myself; what else have I got to work for? How can you work for an audience? What do you imagine an audience would want? I have got nobody to excite except myself, so I am always surprised if anyone likes my work sometimes. I suppose I'm very lucky, of course, to be able to earn my living by something that really absorbs me to try to do, if that is what you call luck.

Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don't want to just collect more fuel.

The artist needs no religion beyond his work.

I sort of dreamed about directing before my career as an actor took off. I've directed stage before in so many capacities on tours. I put that together. You have to. Otherwise, it's your statement. It's your voice, and that has to come through.

I've been inspired by films since I started dancing, and I'm married to a filmmaker, and I think it was one of my secret desires, but I was afraid to just say, 'I want to be a director'. But then one day I said, O.K., stop dreaming and do it. But I didn't want to do it the Hollywood way, and talk through agents. I decided it all had to be generated by me, so I wrote it.

As an actor, most of the time, you only have so much say in how, what and where things go. As a director, you really get to paint a bigger picture. You have many more brushes to use.

I'm directing the Sky show. I'm not going to be in it. I'm just writing and directing it. So that'll satisfy that part of my brain.

The timing for directing is usually because it takes that long to develop a piece and then do pre-production and then post-production. It takes at least a couple of years. I prefer directing to doing other things. Directing and writing seem to be infinitely more creative

I want to write and direct, but I don't think if I did it for 100 years I would ever come close to putting something out there that gives a feeling of all-encompassing and joyous.

When I'm directing I'm working from 100% of my brain, but when I'm acting I'm working from my heart.