I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.
You're not a star until you love yourself. Directors, yeah, they've got to love their own philosophies. But actors have to really love themselves.
To say you want to be a director is to risk sounding obnoxious, pretentious, arrogant, and I think women are more fearful of sounding that way than men are.
My father's a deacon, my mother's a choir director, so I grew up in the church and singing in the choir, begging my mom if I could have a solo.
There were movies that always made me want to be a director. You see brilliant scenes and the way the emotions were handled. I thought, I'd really like to do that.
Of course for many years directors have had to go on the road with their movies and promote them and I've done that since the beginning. So that's not new but the forms of it are different such as with the internet.
I don't always see my movies right away. And there are some I haven't seen at all. Sometimes that bothers the directors, so I'm obliged to see them.
I like to think of myself as a fairly educated human being, but I'm a very uneducated actor when it comes to movies, directors, producers, actors for that matter.
I think one of the major things a director has to do is to know his subject matter, the subject matter of his script, know the truth and the reality of it. That's very important.
If you want to keep on being relevant as a director, I think you have to embrace the times. And with the times come technologies and formats.
Generally my focus has been on people who make things, whether it's writers or directors or painters or musicians.
As an actor, you want a director who makes you feel comfortable in a place that you can really create and try a lot of different things.
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.
The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.
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.
A lot of directors in television have come up through the technical ranks. They have all the technical skills in the world. They're not all that familiar with actors.
Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
When I was in college, I had only one ambition that one day I would like to be a director.
Gastronomy is my hobby. I'm simply the casting director. Once I've brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.
Run away from laziness; work hard. Touch intuition and listen to the heart, not marketing directors. Dream.
