Lee Grant Quotes

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.

When I was doing something on someone else's dime, I was inclined to try to anticipate what they wanted. I knew that wasn't what an artist was supposed to do. In funding my own music, I found my voice.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

I am an independent film-maker first and foremost. I have always cut my own cloth.

All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

As a filmmaker, one tends to want to evolve evermore towards a place of independence.

I like to control my films from beginning to end, to write them the way I want.

Let film-makers take a call about what films they want to do.

It is easier to make a film but difficult to make it on your own terms. In that sense 'Madras Cafe' was a very satisfying experience.

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.

It's just hard to get an independent film made.

Sometimes being an actor is being a song in someone else's mixtape, so I really understand why more and more actors are making films of their own.

No matter where I am working, I cannot make a film without 100% creative control and final cut. If there is such a guarantee, I can work anywhere.

I'll tell you what, I had complete control on 'Unleashed.' I directed, produced, chose the musician, picked the costumes, and everything. I never had anyone saying, 'I don't like this and I don't like that.' The studio, Universal, were easy. It was this weird movie no one cared about.

But if I really want to produce my own work and tell stories, then I will.

I'm a filmmaker; I want to make films. I don't want to sit in a hotel room waiting to make films, and I can control my thing in Denmark; I can make the film I want to make... of course, I have to write a good script, all that, but if I do my job, it will happen.

It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.

In film, you have to let go sometimes.

I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.

I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny.

I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.

I believe in singing for my supper. I'll never accept a grant because what I do should be able to be founded purely on free enterprise.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

To make personal movies that you are the author of, is quite a difficult thing. It takes a lot of stamina.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.