In the beginning, in 1975, just how big a star Kamal Haasan was, today's generation does not know.
Coming from where I came from, the Midwest, in the era I was born, the '30s, movies were glorious fun - Bette Davis dying or whatever. But whatever they were, they were not serious.
And then the first was The Misfits, which I enjoyed very much, with Marilyn and Gable.
I'm a really huge fan of the old romantic comedies from the '30s and '40s... Huge fan. I love all that stuff.
I love 'Bringing Up Baby.' Anything that Katharine Hepburn's in. I'm committed to the Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn era of filmmaking.
Bette Davis was a close friend. She loved to have a good time.
There are many actors who have inspired me: Spencer Tracy for his incredible elegance and, of course, Cary Grant. But, there's also an Italian actor I admire a great deal: Alberto Sordi.
Stanley Kramer? Spencer Tracy? No one turns down being in a movie with them.
My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.
I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.
African Queen' is pretty darn great.
I long for the old days of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, stars who had real glamour and mystique. We only knew so much about their lives; the rest was a mystery.
You have to go back to the '30s and '40s to see a film that's any good.
When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything.
You know, they just don't make big movie stars the way they used to, maybe because the system has changed, the studio system, but it's sad to see people like Jimmy Stewart go, all the giants of the past.
I suppose they call me a woman's director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few.
I'd been a fan of old film comedies like Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks movies - the fast-paced dialogue in movies like 'His Girl Friday' and 'Bringing Up Baby' and 'Twentieth Century' and 'Sullivan's Travels.'
I believe the era of Amitabh Bachchan is not going to come back. He is the last star that we have.
I learned by watching Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand.
I connected very much with all the work of Joan Crawford because she started as a flapper. She used to dance and sing and she was very cute. She had something that was so different from what she is at the end of her life and she started in the silent movies and then went into the talkies.
Lupe Velez was way before me; Dolores Del Rio was way before me, so I had no one. So the only one I could think of that I identified with was this gorgeous creature named Elizabeth Taylor, so she became my role model.
Gene Hackman was a superstar in the '70s - with that face!
I can't stop watching black and white movies. I live in a world of Warner Brothers movies and all of that stuff from an older era, and I love them. I still love them. When I look at them, I sometimes think I was born in the wrong time.
Some of my favorite actors are Gene Wilder and Eddie Murphy back in the day - that's mainly what me and my brothers watched when we were kids.
Gene Kelly was one of the greatest dancers of all time and a taskmaster. He sought from you the absolute best - and he got it.
