Not many French producers work the American way. In France, the director decides everything, he has final cut. I’m trying to do things differently, without the Luc Besson solution.

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.

Every director should take an acting class.

Your life experience is a moving picture, of which you are writer, director, performer, producer and critic.

Nowadays films and television are what I like to call “Microwave Media”. I like mine in the oven, giving the production time to simmer; get the juices flowing, and cooked to perfection. And that takes time. Slow, precious, tempered time. A script is a film’s recipe. It’s just a piece of paper to the novice...

Life is a movie. You are the director in it. The choices you make, are the things that you will see. After you make a choice, there will be no going back, only simple things that will erase it.

But a writer’s contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that’s what being a director is.

I love Malcolm Lee and jumped on the opportunity to work with him as a director.

The time to act is now! Somebody go get the Director.

Larry Kasdan is a great director.

A director without a vision is a catastrophe.

In ‘Winter’s Bone,’ it’s literally the director and the camera operator. That’s it. Just a super-small Kubrick crew. You know what I mean? Like, 8 people.

After all, at end of the day, when you’re breathing your last, it’s not your producer, director, or cast mates by your bedside; it’s your children. Keep that in mind.

It’s so hard to find a director who, when you look at their body of work, you like everything.

In film producing, there is an inherent tension between the director, the money and the producer, and that’s what keeps it flowing and honest and accountable.

I depend on good editors and a good director.

I started my career as an actor, but I’ve been a director for 15 years now.

I really feel that I’m a much better director than I was an actor.

I had become a film director because I thought I could express something in an artful way.

The director is the only person on the set who has seen the film. Your job as a director is to show up every day and know where everything will fit into the film.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

I don’t think it’s a director’s job to peek behind the curtain too much.

I like challenges, I like that fear you feel for something new, and with a new director, I think it’s very important to always support new projects.

In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.

Of course, you could, no doubt, call my going to film school the biggest mistake I ever made.

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.

What I promise to my actors, and to my director, is to give them the salary and everything they need.

I would consider doing any part as long as the script is good and the film has an interesting director.

Theater is very much the world I’d like to get back to, particularly in New York, both as an actor and director.

When I can see things through the lens of the director, it’s like being able to see the whole puzzle – it’s not just about my role, but the whole script.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

I got my dailies every day, although I couldn’t always look at them because I was usually preparing for the next day’s shoot, both as an actress and as the director.

Theater is a lot more interactive, more of a cohesive unit. With television, it can be a different director every episode.

You have to get it in your brain that you don’t belong to yourself as an actor, but that you belong to the director who creates the character.

I would love to occasionally do English-speaking films, but the script is as important for me as the director.

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story.

As an action director, I always try to bring something fresh and new.

Clint Eastwood is an extraordinary director because he knows the value of a buck. He knows where it will show on the screen.

When you’re the director, you kinda do all the work.

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

With ‘Eagle of the Ninth,’ every shot was extremely planned and organized. The director was like, ‘Do this!’ And I say, ‘How was it?’ and he says, ‘Good.’ It was very odd. I would never know where he was headed, or even if he was shooting me at a close-up or from a distance.

I think the toughest thing about being an actor in a film is to be with a director who doesn’t know what they want. And that can be really, really frustrating.

I like it when an actor is secure enough to ask questions, and the director is secure enough not to be threatened by that.

The record producer is the music world’s equivalent of a film director.

My husband’s a director, so he understands what I do.

I’m always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it’s a director’s medium, and if they don’t want to hear from me I just step back.

In a career, when you hit 40 and you’ve done a lot of this and that, you want to try some new things. I feel like that as a director, too, from one film to the other.

I had a dream about you. We were actors in a horror movie and I was hunting you down with a knife. When I finally cornered you the director yelled “Cut”…. What? I can’t be blamed for following instructions.

I have my pride. I’m a director. I’m not going to go and recreate some other director’s vision.

I’m not a director to make an action or horror film. That’s not for me.