Gary Oldman Quotes

Any good director, and I've worked with a few that I would call very good, they know how to disarm any anxieties very quickly.

Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.

It's good to have a leader, otherwise we argue too much.

Collaboration is just, really, a group of people getting in a room with their eye on a very similar prize and wanting to come out with the same show. The director, ultimately, is the guy in front of whom the buck stops. So, he has to have the courage to prevail. But, he has got to have a huge amount of respect for his collaborators.

A good director has to be a captain - he has to work with a lot of people every day.

Leadership is influence.

Well, the first quality of being a good leader is you have to be able to follow. See, a good leader can't just be the leader all the time, I have to be able to follow.

Directing, what little I know, is as much knowing when to step in as when to step out.

The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.

Being a director, just to begin with, is just, I think, one of the hardest jobs just because you have to work in every way. You have to work with actors, you have to be involved with the producers and the writing and the action. Every department comes to you; you have to deal with everything.

There are good leaders who actively guide and bad leaders who actively misguide. Hence, leadership is about persuasion, presentation and people skills.

I think a good director is a good listener.

If I'm a leader, I have a mission.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine.

As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.

And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership.

To be a good director, you have to have good life experience. I'm getting there.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Coaches are an integral part of any manager's team, especially if they are good pinochle players.

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that's a big deal. And if you're going to be a leader - if you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world - in the room, you've got real problems.

The coin of the realm of leadership is trust and confidence.

Leadership involves persuasion, and conciliation, and education and patience. It's long, slow, tough work. That is the only kind of leadership I know or will believe in, or will practice.

A big part of the job of being a showrunner is, in my way of thinking, being a good communicator because there's really no other way to have hope for getting what you want, at the end of the day.

If I can be a leader, I will.

I used to feel that I had to be dictatorial in order to be respected, but after I did a couple of TV movies, I began to see that authority came with the job. So I began to relax and let more people into the process, and my work really improved.