I've always found it strange that a director can hire any designer he wants from any country. But if he hires a foreign actor, it's like he's stolen the crown jewels and run across the river with them.
My mum is deeply, deeply a man's woman, a man's muse. Maybe because I'm a kid from the '80s, I'm a bit more dominant. I wanted to be the muse and the director also. I wanted to be the man and the woman.
For a while, I thought, maybe I should direct, until I got to New York and saw the stupidity of that idea. If it's hard to get into acting, what is it like for a woman to become a director?
So many people have said this, but it's true: 95 percent of what I do as a director is casting and getting people who can bear the load of what you're asking them to do and creating this emotionally safe environment.
I loved putting on stories as plays when I was just six. I was the director, the actress and the set designer; I cast my girlfriends in parts, and I suggested to the local kindergarten teachers that we do free performances for the children.
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.
Actually, what will be shown from here to eternity will be Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr cavorting on the beach. 'From Here to Eternity' must have seemed like a chore to its director, Fred Zinnemann.
They fired director Richard Donner because they didn't want to pay him, and he's the reason the franchise became so successful in the first place. There's a big part of Superman II that he did that no one has ever seen.
So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.
The first heart you win over is that casting director. In first meetings, they'll be the ones who see your pitch for the character. And then as you get further up, they'll be the ones reading with you in front of the network.
Well, I wasn't just kind of standing in a queue at McDonald's and someone sat down and said, 'You're the director of a $100 million Hollywood movie.' I've been working in commercials for ten years.
As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.
All these directors who do different locations forget that one room can be shot from a million different angles and a million different ways. When I direct a movie, I'm going to use that.
I had people in 'Entertainment Weekly' talking about how they wanted to throttle me because they thought I was too disgustingly cute, as if that were my fault, you know, as if that was my fault, not the fault of directors and producers and such.
It was a downriver 10-K in the mouth of the Amazon. I won in an hour and 20 minutes. It has to be one of the fastest times ever swum. The race director said there were no piranhas in that part of the Amazon. The water was too dirty.
Control is the wrong word. The practice is very much about sharing, and, in any creative practice, some individuals, whether partners or directors, are much closer to certain projects than I could ever be.
For John Woo, it is quite difficult to make a movie in Hollywood in his own style. Because Hollywood is based on a producer system, it is difficult for a director to express himself using his own style of filmmaking.
I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.
Over the years, with all the experience, I've become more mature about the subjects I pick. I have a better understanding of what works at the box office. Once the story is finalised, I surrender to the director and follow him. After that, my perform...
The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrill...
In a way, as an actor, you do all the preparation and then you want to forget it and just play the scene. As a director, you can't forget it because somebody will remind you that you forgot something. But you can know your plan well enough that you s...
