aspiring filmmakers Quotes

When you first start out, you want to be Fellini, or you want to be Bergman.

I like working with a first time director. I'm more likely to work with a first time director than I am a second time director.

It is really important that young people find something that they want to do and pursue it with passion. I'm very passionate about filmmaking. It's what I love to do.

When I do encounter young women or aspiring filmmakers who tell me that I've inspired them or that my work means something to them, that's amazing. That's really exciting!

Hollywood is a cottage industry involving a very small number of people, and around the edges are enormous numbers of people trying to get into it and work.

Everyone in Hollywood has a screenplay.

As I talk to film students now especially, I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to try to make your first film." That's the easy one to get, is the first film because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not.

'E.T.' was the movie that made me want to make movies in the first place, and it was the first movie that made me focus on writing instead of what happens in the movie.

A lot of new American directors have had mentors who have given them advice. And some of them have had the way paved for them by huge Hollywood directors who saw a younger version of themselves.

I think that initially all I wanted to do was work as an actress, and then, as I started to work more consistently, you start to maybe want to challenge yourself in different ways, so I think it's something that developed over time - this desire to direct and also to produce. I think as you watch other actresses do it so successfully and so gracefully, you're like, I think that would be fun! It's definitely something that has become more of a priority for me.

I like working with people on their first movies. I think that you never get that level of effort again. And I think that most people only have a couple of amazing stories from their lives, so you're getting the best of them.

As soon as I finished film school I was thinking about, how do I get to feature films? It took about eight years, and I'm still working. Feature films was not the end goal. Feature films was one of the stages. Getting to the point of the Coen brothers or Tarantino, where you're writing your own material and have the budget to do it properly, that's the end goal, and I'm close to that.

Starting in Greece, you couldn't really say, 'I'm going to become a film-maker.' A 15-year-old boy in Greece in the '80s and '90s? There was nothing like that happening.

There are many people who want to make movies and very few opportunities for them to do it. I had a checkered early career with a lot of very unhappy experiences where pictures got taken away, re-cut, re-titled... all the nightmares one hears about. Consequently, it's so gratifying to then make a picture that's successful and gives you leverage to have better circumstances than you've ever had, before the next time out.

I don't have specific people. There are so many people that I admire and there's directors that I'm desperate to work with that haven't even made a movie yet, probably.

Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.

The field (of filmmaking) is suddenly sexy, ... so it's deluged with these wannabes who say 'I don't want to be a secret agent, I'll be a filmmaker.' I think a lot of people are really kind of naive.

I would still encourage somebody, if they wanted to make a movie, to just go take a movie camera. That's clearly been shown to work.

I want to see more young filmmakers, and specifically filmmakers who have a unique voice. I wouldn't mind seeing less of the attempt to force-feed people what others think they want, if that makes sense - whatever the formula is that some people seem to operate under, like needing a certain star, or needing a certain thing in order to get a piece made.

I get to work with incredibly talented young filmmakers and students, and their attitudes and relationship with film is still so pure. That re-inspires me and reminds me why I got into it and what I love about film, and allows me a little reprieve from the business side of it. And it rekindles my love of film.

I encourage first time filmmakers to be ambitious and take chances and risks, because you never know where your career is going to go.

I love supporting emerging voices, and new writers and directors. I love engaging an audience in a way that doesn't have to involve me, personally, and yet still generates an experience for groups of people.

There's a science fiction project we really want to make, but it's very expensive. Hopefully it will happen.

No one - black, white, or any different - walks away from a three-picture deal with a studio. That's every filmmaker's dream. But it wasn't mine.

You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, 'We're not the place for you to make films,' so you decide you have to make a film yourself.