Director's Skill Quotes

I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

To me, still my favorite 3D film is 'Dial M for Murder.' I thought that was great. Hitchcock used it, could put you in the room, which I thought was fantastic, but I'm still not a devotee of 3D.

Seeing someone you know be good at something is really appealing. Seeing how Darren Aronofsky behaved on set, it was another aspect of him, the director. He'd never directed me at home in the kitchen before. It was just seeing a whole other aspect of someone. It was really, really exciting. I loved it.

If a film is being made by an intelligent director, they're going to cast the right guy.

I've directed seven movies and know a thing or two about dealing with unexpected crises.

Establishing mood through pictorial means is the director Ridley Scott's most notable talent. There may be no working director more accomplished at wringing texture out of the color blue than the prodigious and now prolific Mr. Scott; you'd swear that with his dazzling washes of blues and sand tones, he was inventing additional hues on the spot.

I've always had an easy time directing actors because I always hire ones that are great before I get my hands on them.

I think as an action director; it comes kind of naturally to me to a certain extent, because I've done so much action myself - as my MRIs would suggest!

I loved working with him [Justin Chadwick]. He was very smart in how he assembled the people around him and had a crew that he knew very well. He was very comfortable on the set and I never felt that I was working with a first-time filmmaker.

Kenneth Branagh is one of the funniest directors on the set. You laugh a lot. He's very skillful.

Wayne Wang, the director of Because of Winn-Dixie the movie, understood the book and transferred as much of the feeling of the book onto film as humanly possible. I think he did a fabulous job. And also I'm thrilled because the movie brings people to the book - people that wouldn't know about the book - and that's a great thing.

I liked Rajamouli's 'Eega.' He is a great technician, and I would be happy to get a chance to work with him.

Maybe Oliver Stone doesn't lend himself well to remakes or sequels, because he does them so well the first time.

What I like in pictures whether by an old director or a young director is when I have the feeling he or she is really using the capacity of film.

There's something mystical and wonderful about being in the room with the actual live performer s on stage that works. In film, it doesn't work so you're dependent on a great director to keep the thing moving along.

I enjoyed working with Vikram Kumar, as he is an amazing director who is full of ideas, and he tells me that he has different compartments in his brain in which he places different story ideas and works on them simultaneously.

He was such a fabulous drama coach. What better person to have than Alfred Hitchcock? His work as a director was impeccable. I learned so much.

I greatly admire how the essence of Nitesh Tiwari's films resonate with you long after you've left the theatre.

I'm a huge fan of the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and his work, and I knew he was going to be an amazing actor's director, based on the performances that I saw in his movies.

With 'Anna Karenina,' I just think it's a stunning visual tour de force for a director who is at the top of his game.

It's a director's job to tell a story and he's very well versed in telling stories with a bit of comedy in them and keeping the pace of the movie right and that's exactly what he did. He was observant of a world he didn't understand but he told a wonderful story.

Even for the most difficult scenes, and there are difficult scenes in the film, and because Michael Haneke is such a great film-maker - I think a great film-maker is not only being inspired, but how to do it, how to make it as real as possible, knowing that it's not real.

Being an actor really, really strengthens me as a director. There's just a certain type of understanding that comes from having been there and knowing how much is really being asked of actors that helps me.

I don't know how you can tell a good actor in the movies. I really don't. I think you simply just do the part and hope to God that the director has a good cutter and a good editor, and it'll all get cut and put together so that you look good in it.

In most films, when we act, we don't see such meanings in what we do. Rather, we don't realise it. Only when we see it as a continuous film later on do we realise such deep meanings. That is the brilliance of the director.