Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I always question if somebody else is going to love my films. I think that's what art is about - it's so individual. "
Lee Daniels
Art
Question
Always
Related Quotes:
" If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me. "
Lee Daniels
Money
Me
End
" I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills. "
Lee Daniels
Man
Always
Bills
" I came to Hollywood to write and found out I don't have the attention span. "
Lee Daniels
Attention
Hollywood
Attention Span
" I moved on to a nursing agency as a receptionist just to get a job, and ended up managing it, which led to me opening my own - say your mom is sick and needs someone to help her, then you call something like what I had: a home health agency. "
Lee Daniels
Job
Me
Mom
" I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals. "
Lee Daniels
Think
Better
Looking
" What attracts me to material are characters that I know - characters that I know people don't know but I know - and bringing them to the screen. Spotlighting voices that have not been heard before on screen. "
Lee Daniels
Me
Before
Been
" When you're paying everybody nothing, I mean, they have homes to pay for. And my movies are like putting on theater. Nicole Kidman is at craft services, and John Cusack is moving furniture; there are no egos. The only ego is the story. "
Lee Daniels
Story
Moving
Ego
" I don't profess to be Shonda Rhimes by any stretch of the imagination, or Dick Wolf. They're icons. I'm a filmmaker. "
Lee Daniels
Imagination
Stretch
Any
" My dad was a cop. My mom worked at various jobs - she worked as a homemaker, a bank teller, a bartender. "
Lee Daniels
Cop
Jobs
Bank
" Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be. "
Lee Daniels
Out
Up
Thought
" Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it. "
Lee Daniels
America
Inspired
Most
" When people don't like the film, I can take a bullet. I don't mind you talking about me, but I'm protective of my actors, because they bared their soul for me. "
Lee Daniels
Talking
Me
People
" Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in. "
Lee Daniels
Up
Speak
Rarely
" I love black women. I live for them. They are everything to me. I'm obsessed with them. They are sophisticated, resilient and smarter than me. "
Lee Daniels
Everything
Live
Love
" In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans. "
Lee Daniels
Many
Talent
Years
" To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play. "
Lee Daniels
Furniture
You
World
" I come from a family of domestics. I think most African-Americans of my age do. They were trusted by their bosses. I have met so many white people that spent more time with their nannies than they have with their own parents. "
Lee Daniels
Family
Age
Time
" I don't know - I haven't seen any of my movies after I finish them. I leave the editing room; I don't go back. "
Lee Daniels
Finish
Movies
Know
" I'm a filmmaker. I'm always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we're making people think. "
Lee Daniels
People
Partner
Truth
" I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people. "
Lee Daniels
Black
Me
People
" America is fickle. You never know what they're going to go for. "
Lee Daniels
Fickle
Go
Know
" I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful. "
Lee Daniels
Work
Fear
Fearful
" I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College. "
Lee Daniels
Arts
School
High School
" My earliest experience was reading Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' at 8, you know, with a bunch of kids on my steps - on the stoops - and knowing that I wanted to direct them saying the lines. I don't really know how to articulate that 'cause there wasn't someone to show me. "
Lee Daniels
Me
Reading
Experience
" I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world. "
Lee Daniels
World
African-American
Alone
" I like to show the grey area in all my characters. "
Lee Daniels
Grey
Characters
Show
" I want to learn. I want to stretch my muscles as a director and work under different circumstances. "
Lee Daniels
Want
Work
Circumstances
" Theater was always in the backdrop. Nursing was a way to pay the bills. I wasn't a nurse; I had a nursing agency. "
Lee Daniels
Agency
Way
Pay
" When you have a lot of siblings, you always do something to feel special. "
Lee Daniels
Always
You
Special
" I had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don't understand why you're being bullied, so you just suppress it. "
Lee Daniels
You
Myself
School