Lee Daniels Quotes & Sayings

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

I think this last film I finished, 'The Butler,' is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire. — Lee Daniels

Trust is hard to get from actors, and for me to give to actors. — Lee Daniels

I don't think anyone likes anything of mine. At the end of the day, I love it, but just because I love it ... I happen to love broccoli, not a lot of people like broccoli. I always question if somebody else is going to love my films. — Lee Daniels

'Empire' was a very traumatic experience for me. It was very schizophrenic, and it wasn't what I expected it to be. — Lee Daniels

I was the oldest of five children, each about a year apart, and my mother, bless her heart, had her hands full. — Lee Daniels

I embrace the criticism, because ultimately (it means) the masses have seen it [my movie]. I embrace it for my father's story, for my mother's story, for my auntie, for my grandmother, who all got their teeth knocked out so I could be [where I am]. — Lee Daniels

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

I have twins that I didn't want to have the life that I had. I didn't have a great life growing up. — Lee Daniels

I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting. — Lee Daniels

Most actors want the audience to like them, and that leads to bad acting. — Lee Daniels

I am so used to having two faces. A face that I had for black America and a face for white America. When Obama became president, I lost both faces. Now I only have one face. — Lee Daniels

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

My dream is to make a Superman hero that's gay. — Lee Daniels

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

I wanted to make a black 'Dynasty.' — Lee Daniels

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid. — Lee Daniels

I came to Hollywood to write and found out I don't have the attention span. — Lee Daniels

I've had all types of beautiful girls tell me that they ugly when they look in the mirror, as if it's someone else's reflection they see. — Lee Daniels

I don't read the reviews, the blogs, or anything else. Instead, I feel the audience when I show the film. — Lee Daniels

I definitely caught the acting bug, but that lasted for about two seconds when I found my way to L.A. and found that my talents were better suited behind the cameras. — Lee Daniels

I see the world from a very specific perspective. It is how I grew up. It is what I am proud of, and I vocalize it. And for those who have not experienced my experience, it is odd, and it's not mainstream. — Lee Daniels

It's hard for me to accept love. I wish I could lie to you and tell you that it's easy for me, but it's not. — Lee Daniels

I'm in a great place because I trust people behind the camera as I go off, and I still go back to my day job and do film. — Lee Daniels

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

I've never done a studio movie, let alone worked for a network. Every one of my films has been independently financed. — Lee Daniels

I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful. — Lee Daniels

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

My partner, Danny Strong, came to me with this idea of telling a story about my life and merging that with music and the hip-hop world. He wrote 'The Butler' and originally wanted to do 'Empire' also as a movie. — Lee Daniels

I come from a family of servants. My father's father was a servant, and my father's father's father was a slave. — Lee Daniels

Stars make money on real movies. They make big money on real movies. To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. — Lee Daniels

I felt hopeful for the future because Obama is here. But nothing has changed. It's time for young kids to get serious again and really think about what their four fathers were like. As African-Americans, we are resilient, we are some bad mf-ers, and we are survivors. So get those i-pods out of their ears and become heroes again like the Freedom Riders. — Lee Daniels

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

My mom knew early on that I was gay, and she knew that I had to get out of the ghetto. — Lee Daniels

I'm not tough when it comes to people criticizing the people that I protect, and those are the actors. It makes them scared to do it again for another director. — Lee Daniels

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day. — Lee Daniels

I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films. — Lee Daniels

The ratings board is completely different when it comes to film versus the television arena. — Lee Daniels

I want to live in my truth. Tell me you don't like me, and I know it. But when you don't tell me, and you work behind my back, it's a lie, and I don't know how to fight that. — Lee Daniels

'Shadowboxer' was based on my life. — Lee Daniels

My mom had five kids. And she came home after working three jobs, and I'd rub her feet. We'd all rub her feet. We were lucky to get any time with her. — Lee Daniels

I'm always more comfortable and in a good place when I'm with friends because I know they trust me. I'm able to get great performances from people who trust me. — Lee Daniels

I think the father-son love story is a universal one which transcends color. — Lee Daniels

I like all my work equally. I look at the projects as children. I look at the experience more than the end result. — Lee Daniels

I've dodged all sorts of bullets in Hollywood to get my movies made. I'm tough. — Lee Daniels

My mission is to let black kids know that their dreams can happen. — Lee Daniels

I can't do movies where you start thinking "Where's the commercial appeal? How are we going to market this?" It's not that kind of party. — Lee Daniels

I think it's very important that we don't sound like militants. Often what we do is we give a comment, and because it comes across with passion, then we're 'angry black people.' — Lee Daniels

Most of my friends are dead. I watched friends die in my arms at 5, 6, 8. When I grew up, the rest of my friends died of AIDS. — Lee Daniels

I think people in the future will come up to me and say, "Everything that you are and everything that you have is because of that butler [film]." Of course, that's Oprah's line from the movie, but I think it will resonate with my legacy with the movie. — Lee Daniels

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

While I am not a musician, I love music. I have over 15,000 songs on my iPod. Everything from hard core rap to the soundtrack from the original 'Cinderella.' — Lee Daniels

I worked at Warner Bros. for a while. I was the head of the minority talent casting. It was like pre-Spike Lee and post-blaxploitation era. — Lee Daniels

'Precious' is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I'm prejudiced. I'm prejudiced against people who are darker than me. — Lee Daniels

I'm not Tyler Perry. I'm not Dino De Laurentis. I think it's a bit much to put one's name in front of the film. It makes me uncomfortable. — Lee Daniels

There are servers, and there are people that are served. There's something contradictory about that in a democracy, certainly. — Lee Daniels

I'm not really vegan. I'm vegan-ish. I have a piece of lamb every now and then. — Lee Daniels

When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar. — Lee Daniels

As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace. — Lee Daniels

I went back-to-back from 'Paperboy' to 'Butler,' literally with no break. — Lee Daniels

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

My work is therapeutic: 'Monster's Ball,' 'Woodsman' and 'Shadowboxer,' because I don't go to therapy, and I sort of live life through my films. — Lee Daniels

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

I grew up hardcore. I learned to be more responsible - and fiscally responsible - you know, I just wanna be a kid again! Do a musical, have tons of time or something. — Lee Daniels

I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills. — Lee Daniels

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

My dad was a cop. My mom worked at various jobs - she worked as a homemaker, a bank teller, a bartender. — Lee Daniels

America is fickle. You never know what they're going to go for. — Lee Daniels

That's the gift 'Precious' has given me. You really think you're telling a story about a fat black girl, and only fat black girls will understand it, and then you realize we're all Precious. — Lee Daniels

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

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

I believe in life that you know that everything prepares you for the next thing - whether it's a hit, whether it's not a hit, whether it's a ... your failures are your accomplishments because it makes you prepared for whatever it is that you are going to do next. — Lee Daniels

I'm not going to be labeled a black filmmaker. I am not here to just tell black stories. I'm here to tell all kinds of stories, musicals and dramas. — Lee Daniels

My kids tell me to Instagram, so I do that. I have a few thousand followers. — Lee Daniels

I like to show the grey area in all my characters. — Lee Daniels

I want to go to places that are unexpected of me because people really think they have me pegged. — Lee Daniels

I look at my movies; I call my movies 'the kid.' It's like I'm giving birth. I'm in the cocoon, you know? — Lee Daniels

Here's the thing: I think the media underestimates the intelligence of the moviegoer. We need to be fulfilled. People want to sit down and think, and I try to make people think. — Lee Daniels

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

I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world. — Lee Daniels

I don't know whether everybody likes the films that I do. I know that I love them, and I believe the way that I raise my kids that they will love them, and that's what most important to me. — Lee Daniels

I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera. — Lee Daniels

Putting on a movie is like going to war - for me, at least. It's all about time; time is money, and we don't have it. So it's all about getting to know each other intimately quickly. You are with family members that you like or don't like, but you can't leave them because you're stuck with them. — Lee Daniels

I'm still pulled over ... We were nominated for two Oscars for 'Monster's Ball,' and I almost didn't make the Oscars because I got pulled over in Beverly Hills. — Lee Daniels

I want to see movies I can walk away from and say, 'Wait, what happened there? Hold up, what did I just see? What?' and then it connects to something that you personally, unequivocally know to be truth. — Lee Daniels

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

Some of my friends don't have a cell phone. Patti LaBelle doesn't have a cell phone. — Lee Daniels

I've met Shonda Rhimes a few times, and certainly she's an inspiration for me in television. — Lee Daniels

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

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

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

With TV, you're in people's houses every night. And you have so much time to tell stories. I don't know why I didn't do it before. — Lee Daniels

Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in. — Lee Daniels

I drank from colored water fountains and from the white water fountain just to see what it was like when I was a kid. What shocks me is that these kids today don't realize that this happened in many of our lifetimes. — Lee Daniels

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

I love actors, and I'm very protective of them. I trust them. It's a mutual trust. — Lee Daniels

I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful. — Lee Daniels

People enjoy making fun of people who are famous; they love putting people down. — Lee Daniels

I think that when you have audacity, you will get polarization. — Lee Daniels

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