I started doing a lot of research into the science of love and sex...And I met my husband and he didn't check off a single box on my list. He just loved me and I loved him.

[Nemes:] It had to be a very organic process. We wanted to rely on the imagination of the viewer.

We did tons of research, interviewed the daughters, and even got to talk to Kirk Douglas before we started shooting...we tried really hard to be completely authentic...

[Morgan:] Part of our desire was to give voice to the voiceless...these extraordinary working-class women.

[Fukunaga:] I'm not sure where I'm headed...I still look at all these movies as an experience to learn from.  

Everybody understands when we make a conventional technique—it's very direct. But I feel that's reducing the human power of observation...

It's a tricky thing...you're going to get different accounts of different instances from different people.

[De Sica was] Like a general...he said to me, 'I want to see in your eyes all the psychological passages of your emotion.'

[Tomlin:] I like to do it all...you want to get as much information, as much input as you can...I like to learn something that I can do in the scene...

I was taught to deeply respect the written word...the role is on the page, the character is in me, and I suppose I bring my intuition and my wisdom and my love of language to that page, and that's how it comes to life.

[Starzak:] We add the mumbling for comedy or to help a story point, but generally we try to keep it as dialogue-free as possible.

[Bel Powley:] Reading it made me realize how much we don't talk about about teenage female sexuality.

[Segel:] I really did relate to this feeling of extreme caution that, uh, even something I say off-handedly could now be printed out-of-context, anywhere, for the rest of my life.

[Alvarez:] I wanted it to be a collaborative environment. I didn't want to pit the actors against themselves. The characters are pitted against each other. So the actors didn't have to be.

I'm a communicator. I reach an audience by whichever means are possible, and my voice is one of them. The other is the ability to clearly enunciate what it is that I want to say...And to treat everything as a story to be told.

When I got to set, [Woody Allen] kind of showed me what the temperature of the movie was. I didn't know if I was in a comedy. I didn't know the tone. I thought a lot about jazz when I was working on this.

It's not an easy business...

[Mann:] It's about the importance of opening up, or letting people in, and making real connections. Even if you're facing rejection, it's ultimately more fulfilling, and you at least can learn something from it...

The script already has such a beautiful rhythm...quite playful and fun...As he starts to come of age, the movie starts to be still and quiet, and so that's the kind of big picture that we set out to design the film together.

It's a prison movie when you think about it....you know, his being watched, infantilized. And yeah we're talking about this specific period of his life and his career where it's a dialectic between work and life, and enjoyment and freedom...

[Schwartman:] This kind of guy is in a fog type of alcoholism...you can have a period in your life...where you look back and you go 'Gosh. I was in a stasis then. I didn't do anything.' There's no movement. And I think Larry's in that zone.

There's parts of me that can be very confident...I guess in real life I don't really dare to do that, yeah, because I don't think it's smart to do, and I'm not confident enough. But to do it in a role, it's fantastic.

From its very origins, particularly when it was black-and-white filmed, film was so closely connected to dreaming. And it's probably why people connected to it so readily...

Along comes the maid at the end, in the sleepwalking scene. And to my amazement, she’s wearing Arthur Dent’s dressing gown. Not any more, I hasten to say, because it was too big for her.

Staying with some friends in this big house in the Hollywood hills...I just remember looking out over the deck of this house and seeing the city below and feeling like 'Oh, I’m on top of the world. And I’ve never been more lonely or isolated.'

It’s a pretty classic kind of set-up for the love story genre because it’s two people who are in love who have to face an obstacle together. And what we reveal in the story is the depth of their love, through how they do that.

Malcolm is a totally different kind of role than I've ever played. He's a listener. And that's a really powerful thing to be able to do...Hank Jennings was a duplicitous guy...

At the end of the shoot, I would talk to the actors, like 'Okay, next year, here's what's coming.' And then I had the year to think about it, and so did they.

I enjoy the creative process. I love the writing part of it, the editing—one of my favorites. But I also like the production process. It’s just fun to do. That’s what I’ve discovered, you know, as I’ve gotten older.

Never, ever date a writer. It’s always a mistake. Just do not trust us.

[Katami:] You know, watching the film did one thing for us. It made sense of what happened, because when you're living it, it's very odd to have to go to court and defend your life, and have to testify about your love and how that cannot change.

[Wiggins:] He really does have a good heart. He just doesn't know how to use it...'cause he's been polluted by all this stuff that's happened in his life......there's a lot of stuff going on in that head of his.

[Young:] Valli offered me much more help than he ever knew. Because I stole from him shamelessly every time I've seen him over all of these years. You can learn something about somebody's psychology more by what they choose to evade...

[Jay Baruchel:] Dean always allows us time to 'find daylight,' to sort of try to make it our own and kinda do what I call 'handmade acting,' right? Make it a bit clumsy, rough around the edges, homemade.

When you watch the last ten minutes of the film, and all that is me, you think, 'That’s why I did that.' But when you’re in it, it’s like...'when’s this going to end?'

It’s an incredible thing to sit as far as I’m sitting from you, and have this incredible noise come at you. And that human beings can make these sounds is remarkable.

Looking at it from the perspective of today, you can’t help but look at them then and say they’re the original Modern Family. It’s an alternative family, and what’s wrong with that?

It’s very funny when you tell...the studio...'We have a second movie.' They can’t comprehend it...they were like, 'Ha ha! Must feel like that, right?'...'No, we literally have a second movie. We've cut it, if you want to watch it.'

[Walt Disney] pulled the car off to the side, and stopped the car, and he says, 'You're not going to give your royalties on this song away! It's going to put your kids through college!'

[Rush:] Hans has a kind of natural emotional intelligence for he senses a spark of life and isn’t going to engage in therapy like 'Are you feeling grief?'. He’d rather play the accordion and say 'I understand something about you.'

[Dern:] A couple years ago, I got tired of performing. And I just wanted to be human beings in movies from now on. I want to be real people. I don’t want to perform. I want...an hour and forty-five minutes of moment-to-moment behavior.

Staying in character—it was just an obvious thing. For me, there were so many physical attributes. So many emotional things to keep track of. I couldn’t imagine, like, letting go of all that.

The sort of ability to put total and complete trust in a bunch of young yahoos for a guy who’s accomplished as much as [Redford] has was kind of shocking—that he makes decisions to kind of expose himself.

The point of change, I think, for Solomon that makes him very distinctive and distinct from a lot of people and a lot of us...is that he recognizes that he is actually in a fight for his mind.

It wasn’t until she became of sexual interest to Master Epps that she was sent out into the field...that spoke of a woman who had kind of the Stockholm syndrome where you’re traumatically bonded to the people who cause you the most harm.

Even the best movies...are not as rich and nuanced as detailed as real life or an actual human being. And so to compare your real life, or your partner or lover or whoever to a character in a movie, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

For me, if you want to make a film about Saudi Arabia, there is no way you can escape religion; it's a big part of people's lives, whether they are religious or not...people find themselves in situations where they position themselves next to religion...

[Larson:] One of the interesting things that I learned was that sometimes loving someone or showing love doesn't always mean that you have to give in. Sometimes you have to be hard and kind of get them to toe the line a little bit.

My father wasn’t the greatest guy in the world, to me. And his treatment of me wasn’t that great. Some of this stuff is directly taken from me and my father. And my father actually took me to see Jayne Mansfield’s car...

Everybody's got an idea about what everyone is. But only if you take the time to kind of be with that person and get to know them and understand where they're coming from and what makes them tick [do] you start to see there's a lot more...