I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn’t been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn’t like what a woman her age is offered. That’s a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn’t work the other way around.

This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we’ve been trying to generate material.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

Later on they send me to Hollywood. To make movies. It was all new to me. I was only 21 years old.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‚title‘ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

Film is not an easy occupation. There’s a lot of occupations that are difficult and film is one of them.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

Being a stunt coordinator, I have to take care not only of myself but I have to make sure everyone is safe.

As we all know, sequels can be tricky.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

I do love the films I’ve done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we’re trying to make people laugh and I’m very proud of that.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

I don’t want people saying, ‚Should we get a female director?‘ I want to hear, ‚Should we get a great director for this movie?‘

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad… he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

I get impatient with people working on a film that have their head in their hands like it’s the most complicated thing in the world.

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‚Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie.‘

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

Film is a very tight little box. If you don’t fit in that box, you’re gone. Television, there’s more room to move around.

My friend James Cameron and I made three films together – True Lies, The Terminator and Terminator 2. Of course, that was during his early, low-budget, art-house period.

Because of my wrestling background, nothing a director can throw at me on a set can faze me.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

Jackie Chan is a myth.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

I feel like I might be a designer or stylist – or a director because I have always been super interested in cameras and editing.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

I’ll continue to make the typical Adam Sandler comedies.

I’m one of those people who says, ‚yes, cinema died when they invented sound.‘

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

I love good film, whether it’s an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren’t necessarily eccentric ones but they’re the more specific ones.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.