Movie Set Quotes & Sayings

You really get to direct the movie three times when it comes to the action sequences and the set pieces. — Colin Trevorrow

No one trusts me any more. I spent half the movie Maigret (1988) (TV) arguing with people and I was accused of causing big on-set rows. But what they won't tell you is I fought for Simeneon. I fought for the maintenance of quality. I don't believe in lyin. — Richard Harris

Once you turn on the camera, making a movie is making a movie. I don't care if it's $9 million dollars or $50 million dollars. You have bigger toys, bigger set, actors who are better paid, but once you turn on the camera, it's director and performance, and I don't find a big difference. — Peter Landesman

I think I would have been so much in awe of the movie set, the people and what everybody's job was, that I don't know if I would be able to concentrate on the character. — Daisy Fuentes

I'm intimidated every day I go on the stage and everyday I go on a movie set. It's terrifying and I always want to reshoot the first day or the first week, I'm so terrified. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

It's great when improv is encouraged. It's a really fun thing. It depends on who's in the movie and how their process works, as well. It takes a director who is open to that because you have a script, but then something funny could happen on set. So, to have people around you who encourage improv is really exciting. — Lily Collins

When you're a lead role, I'm learning that you set a tone for the movie in a way, like a director does, or like other actors do. But it seems like you set a mood on set. — Kit Harington

One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. — Delia Ephron

I've never changed my approach to acting. I've always felt like I've gotten better. I think that all of us can get better. I feel like, in my acting, I'm better than I was three pictures ago. I think about it. I'm a slow study. It takes me a long time to grasp the material, in order to perform it. But when I come to the set, on the first day, I know the whole movie. That's why I have to start early. — Kevin Costner

Usually, like, on 'Mean Girls,' the task that Tina Fey and I set for ourselves was we wanted to maintain a comic intensity throughout the movie, where people just don't really get a break from laughing. And if they do, it's for a brief emotional scene, and then we're going to once again try to knock them on their heels again with comedy. — Mark Waters

She put up her posters, which mainly consisted of one five-foot-wide panorama of Diego Luna doing a split on the set of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights-which Penelope had decided would be an excellent conversation topic, because that is a movie everyone likes. — Rebecca Harrington

Certainly in the movie business there are bullies all over - bullies in the distribution business, exhibition business, production. Fine-tuning adult bullying is different. When a bully is an adult, it's a whole different set of colors. — Martin Kove

I never go on a movie set as the star. I always go as the guy who just does his job, like the electrician does his job and the hairdresser does her job. Let's all work together and make this happen, rather than have the star treatment. I don't do that. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

In a funny way, acting, to me, is all make-believe, even if the film has unicorns in it or is a normal movie that can be set in real-life time. I'm still imagining that I'm a different character, so it's all, in a funny way, like fantasy. — Elle Fanning

Most people live life on the path we set for them. Too afraid to explore any other. But once in a while people like you come along and knock down all the obstacles we put in your way. People who realize free will is a gift, you'll never know how to use until you fight for it. — The Adjustment Bureau

Intimate scenes on a movie set are just dry, bizarre things; people standing around. — Daniel Craig

My agent called me at 5:30am, and I thought the set of my movie had burned down, or Josh [Hutcherson] had died, or something ... I didn't realize! I was so tired! — Jennifer Lawrence

A movie set or any set is a completely private place and it feels very insulated. — Noah Emmerich

When you're doing a live-action movie, you have your day set up and you're going to do this shot and this shot, and eventually the sun is going to go down. It's a sequential race to whatever is going to end the day. — Wes Anderson

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. — Julian Fellowes

Sometimes when you get on a new movie you kind of how to figure out the way other people work and it can be like being the new kid in high school where you're just trying to find out where your place is on the movie or on the set. — Luke Wilson

But having said that, regardless to what reviews come out whatever, I like love the movie. I think it's great, and so people can think what they think about it, but I'm very happy with what we did. I'm really proud of whatever all the actors what we all kind of accomplished and so regardless of how well it does or whatever I'm very excited about it and I think we set out to do the thing and accomplished what we wanted to do. Our goal was met, so yeah. — Nicholas Stoller

The high stone fireplace, the heavy walnut tables, the fringed Oriental rug, the leather furniture. The air definitely came alive, but Willie felt out of place. Not because of any excessive luxury-the furnishings, while meticulously preserved, were still scarred and worn, but they seemed to suspend him in another time. Why, it was like walking into a movie set for Wuthering Heights. — Gloria Naylor

I like horror movies, they're fun. It was the most fun I've had on a movie set. — Clea Duvall

It takes no prisoners. We had to completely change wardrobe for the girls because we had summer wardrobe set and it was so frigidly cold while we were shooting. And the bug population was through the roof, that summer. It was just silly! The fact that we even survived at all is shocking. The fact that we came out of it with a movie that I really like is awe-inspiring. — Katie Aselton

I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds gliding past on Vespas with crinkly, long, hair, and I thought I was on the set of a movie. I couldn't believe that this was going on and I hadn't known about it before. I was flabbergasted. — Walter Kirn

For the first 10 minutes after you meet them, they have the wattage and charisma of movie stars. Then you have a coffee with them and you realize we're all the same, we're all just people. All of the actors in The Avengers are so nice. Marvel has these code names for projects and the code name for The Avengers was Group Hug. It felt very much like a group hug on set. — Tom Hiddleston

It's just fun to be on a movie set and looking to find the comedy in sweet, simple family moments. — Sean Astin

Any athlete or any actor who's preparing for a long time to step on a stage or step on a field or step on a movie set, who suffers an injury right before you're getting ready to perform or to execute - it is a massive challenge that's thrown your way that you didn't expect. — Dwayne Johnson

I think title sequences are an opportunity to sort of set the stage or to get people thinking in different terms than maybe whatever they understand the movie to be going in. — David Fincher

We're trying to set up a movie for me in the near future. It's going to be similar to the story of how I got discovered. Kinda like my own version of '8 Mile.' — Justin Bieber

BBC had tried to develop the book, set in England, as a two-hour movie. I went to a meeting and they said, "Look at this," and I thought the book was outstanding. I was like, "Can I do this?" — Glen Morgan

This is, in fact, the biggest show that Marvel television has ever taken on, in the animation world. We had a real challenge that was posed to us, and that was this little, tiny art-house movie that came out last year, that I don't know if you saw, called Marvel's The Avengers, written and directed by our friend Joss Whedon, and it really set the template. — Jeph Loeb

When I'm making a movie, I never watch the dailies. I see the movie once and that's it. It's really not about that for me. It's not about the externals. When I'm on a set, I don't want to see it. I want to be subjective in it. That's my habit now. — Lance Henriksen

At the end of the day, it's nice to walk away from a set knowing that you're doing a movie that is not just for money and is not just pure entertainment. — Amy Weber

I often compare putting a hotel together to old-time movie production. You come up with a story line, you hire the writer, the director, the stars, the set designer. — Andre Balazs

The whole visual language of the movie is developed way before we get to set. Especially when you're doing visual effects and you don't have a lot of money to mess around, which we didn't, you have to really preplan everything. Pretty much every shot in the film was figured out months before we got to set. — Darren Aronofsky

They told me I'd have to be there for the entire shooting of the movie which was two and a half months and again, I was surprised. Most movies I'd worked on before took only a day or so, so I realized this was a pretty big deal. I got to the set and was involved in a very integral way, which was a fun experience to be a part of. — Mike Vallely

We're teaming up with a major Hollywood studio, and we're making a movie called 'Copper.' It's set on Mars in the 24th century. By then we've got 27 billion people in the world, copper is the world's most valuable metal because everything runs on electricity, and there's no more burning of hydrocarbons. — Robert Friedland

It's like when we get the transformer movies. It was all a bunch of smaller robot pieces and then you're on set, and you're watching them blow everything up and you see the movie and you say "wow there's a big giant spaceship crashes there and it turns into a transformer." It's stuff that you don't really see, because our involvement is so heavy. — Gregory Nicotero

It's really easy to finish a movie and sort of immediately dive into the next one, because I love working with actors so much and being on set, my inclination is to try to get back to that as soon as possible. There's just never much of a gap. — Joe Swanberg

The Lord of the Rings movie set an entirely new standard for fantasy in the movies. — Sarah Zettel

Please do not look only at the dark side
All the newspapers in the free world explain why you return their readers understand how you feel
You have the sympathy of millions
As a tribute to your sorrow we resolve to spend more money on nuclear weapons there is always a bright side
If this were only a movie a boat would be available have you ever seen our movies they end happily
You would lean at the rail with 'him' the sun would set on China kiss and fade
You would marry one of the kind authorities
In our movies there is no law higher than love in real life duty is higher
You would not want the authorities to neglect duty
How do you like the image of the free world sorry you cannot stay
This is the first and last time we will see you in our papers
When you are back home remember us we will be having a good time. — Thomas Merton

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules. — Jason Bateman

Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts. — Wesley Morris

I think people are used to seeing actors be wide open and desperately giving of themselves, and while I do that on a movie set as much as I can, it's so unnatural for me to do it on television, in interviews, in anything like that. I also don't find that my process as an actor is really anyone else's business. — Kristen Stewart

I recently had a few days off while shooting a movie in Budapest, so I took a cab from the set to the airport, looked at the departure board, and decided where I wanted to go right then and there. I spent four days in Rome and didn't tell anyone I was going. — Cory Monteith

I don't feel very glowing, especially after wearing makeup - and not necessarily my choice of makeup - for 12 hours straight on a movie set. When I'm playing a character, her look is sometimes different from my own. — Jessica Biel

It used to be for writers that that six seasons and a movie thing, that's the holy grail as writers - your series goes eight, 10 seasons, you're set for life. — Noah Hawley

The Bible's was an unlikely, movie-set world alongside our world. Light-shot and translucent in the pallid Sunday-school watercolors on the walls, stormy and opaque in the dense and staggering texts they read us placidly, sweet-mouthed and earnest, week after week, this world interleaved our waking world like dream. — Annie Dillard

I remember reading this thing that Elizabeth Taylor wrote. She had her first kiss in character. On a movie set. It really struck me. I don't know how or why, but I had this sense that if I wasn't really careful, that could be me: that my first kiss could be in somebody else's clothes. And my experiences could all belong to someone else. — Emma Watson

The truth of actually working on a movie set is that you're in the midst of a logistical nightmare. There are so many things going on. There are many factors that keep your ideal scenario from ever happening. And you're rarely going to get that. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Since I was 12 or 13, I have been taking movie meetings finding a project right for me because I wanted to try it. Craig gave us the script - it was set in Wales, it is really British humour. I just loved it. — Charlotte Church

Christie Brinkley told me that I needed to become a movie star because I have that something, and then we actually just became friends on set. She has such a young spirit, and is so vivacious. It was such a fun, fun shoot. — Ashley Graham

My first film was a movie shot in 1974. I was 18 on that movie set. It was called 'Big Bad Mama.' I turned 19 on the next movie I worked on, which was a black 'Blazing Saddles.' I worked in the art department. It was called 'Darktown Strutters.' — Bill Paxton

You put on this set of goggles, and within seconds, your brain is convinced you're now in a different, virtual environment. You're somewhere else, and that somewhere else may be a video game, it may be in a real-time movie, a museum exhibit, or a medical surgical training app. — Brendan Iribe

I've made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I'm the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you're the boss, if it ain't good, you don't use it. You just cut it out. — Tom Hanks

What's great about working with EPIX is that we have unparalleled access to the top movie talent and do exclusive 1:1 sit-down interviews with the actors, sometimes before anyone else does. With 'The Hunger Games,' we had our own studio set up and did 1:1s with Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Lenny Kravitz, etc. — Carly Steel

Out of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, Soho in particular had the charged atmosphere of a movie set, populated with passersby who looked like extras from Central Casting, so perfectly did they fit into this environment. There was the feeling of everything being not quite real, or too perfectly cliched to actually be true, and it began to rain in a fine, misty drizzle from a black patent leather sky. — Candace Bushnell

I've always lived out of a suitcase. I was in a new city every three months. When I was a model, I traveled the world, and as an actor you're traveling from movie set to movie set. So I've never been in one place long enough for anything super-bad to happen. — Krysten Ritter

There's never been a mathematical equation that says a good experience making a movie equates to a good movie, or a bad experience on a set is going to lead to a bad movie. — Joel Edgerton

I really love acting. I really do. I really just think of myself like a working woman. And I just go from set to set and work. You have to promote a movie; you have to work. People are going to have opinions and it's weirdly very easy to kind of block out the world because you have your own. — Jennifer Lawrence

I've never set out to write a funny movie or be a funny comedian as a woman. I am a woman. I don't really have a choice in the matter. My goal is just to be funny. — Maya Rudolph

You try to do as much as you can on set because practical looks cool and practical looks great. Until you get to a point where the reality is you look at it - and I went through this in my last movie which was a war film, which my brother fought in Iraq and I did a ton of research and as much as I could made it documentary-like - and then at some point on set, the reality is somebody says to you, "You know, you can use a real squib and you can have three hours of clean up and you can lose five shots or we can do that blood explosion in post and you can get those five extra shots." — Kimberly Peirce

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time. — Bel Kaufman

The street looks like the set of a ghost town in an old western movie, but there are eyes everywhere. — Vikki Wakefield

Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins' set the bar very high for the superhero movie, as it showed that you could get a great cast for these movies and take a real filmmaker's perspective. — Jon Favreau

For you, it's a silent movie. For us, it's a talking movie because we had lines on set. There's a lot of noise on set and music. We spoke in English, in French, in gibberish, but it was very alive. The challenge was tap dancing. — Jean Dujardin

When I did that first movie, it was the introduction to all the set-up time and the waiting time that's endemic in motion pictures, and the repetition. — Harry Shearer

The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he's peeing on a tree ... Mr. David Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, apparently pees hard and often. — David Foster Wallace

I set out to do a horror film with 'Dog Soldiers,' and what I came out with at the end of the day was something that was more of a cult movie, more of a black comedy with some horror elements in it. It kind of went over the top. — Neil Marshall

You know, OJ was a really nice guy, and he knew his lines. He was nice to everybody on the set. He got to be a better actor, I thought, with every movie. — David Zucker

If I were to remake a movie, I'd love to remake Halloween 3 Season of the Witch because even though it's a very flawed film, at its core is a brilliant idea: An evil toymaker is set to kill all the children of the world on Halloween night - and I think that's absolutely fantastic. So whoever has the rights can give me a call. — Bryan Fuller

We set up a beta site, a test site, with movie, music and book reviews. If you're reading them and you want to buy a book or a ticket for a movie that's reviewed on the site, you can do that without leaving our site. — Jay Chiat

It was on a van ride home from the movie set that everything came together. I realized I had to get off Twitter. It just struck me that I couldn't stop everyone else from doing it, but I could certainly stop myself. — Nick Offerman

No [movie is really worth watching] which does not either impart valuable knowledge; or set before us some ideal of beauty, strength, or nobility of character. There are enough [great movies] to occupy us during all our short and busy years. If we are wise, we will resolutely avoid all but the richest and the best. — J.R. Miller

We've had some really good guest stars. But I have to go with Alec Baldwin as my favorite. He is so neat and such a movie star. He's handsome and quirky. I was in heaven the week he was on the set. — Nikki Cox

You never know what to expect when you're a writer visiting a movie set. — Bryan Burrough

There's this absurd situation on a movie set where your trailer's here and the set is here and the lunch tent is here, and you're not allowed to get yourself from these three places. — Olivia Williams

Alan Cumming was such a fun guy to watch. I remember he has a song in the first 'Spy Kids' movie, and when Danny Elfman came to set, they were working on the song. — Daryl Sabara

My parents love it! They're on set. They make cameos in the movie. My father is a psycho-analyst and a professor at Harvard and he told me how many of the other professors at Harvard have gone and seen it. They love Hostel and they love the thought behind it. — Eli Roth

I don't ever want to do a movie where you shoot it on a motion capture stage. I just don't like taking the reality out of it. I like being on the set in real environments. I don't like shooting on green screen. I think it gives the actors so much more to play with when there's real stuff happening on the set. — Michael Bay

As the lead of a movie, you really set the tone off-camera as well, and that's a really big responsibility. — Jenna Fischer

If this were a book or movie, she thought, she'd be able to read the stars and get her bearings. Characters always had just the right random skill set to master the situation at hand. Like, Thank god for that summer on an uncle's smuggling boat and the handsome deckhand who taught me celestial navigation. Ha. — Laini Taylor

A lot of producers now are people who stay in their office and never go to the set. I don't know how you can be the advocate of the movie if you're not there in it every day. — Gale Anne Hurd

47 Ronin is a very special movie for me. Not only a Samurai thing. Not only a Hollywood fantasy. It has a very special mixture between Japanese traditional culture and Western culture for the costume, set, story. Everything. I believe it will be a very special film that no one has ever seen. — Hiroyuki Sanada

You have to throw yourself into a situation of trust with these things, especially that first day when you don't know someone and you're on a massive Disney Hollywood movie set. — Richard Madden

I have this set-up at my house where I have one big movie theater screen that's 9 ft. by 16 ft. Then, I have nine 63-inch monitors around it; four on either side and one underneath. So I get all nine one o'clock games, and I can switch them onto the big screen. That's what I do on the Sundays during the season. — John Madden

We needed to have a great set decorator, a great D.P., a great costume designer, everybody. Without all these people, we would have made a shitty movie. — Vincent Paronnaud

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess. — Melissa Leo

For me, to take a movie and travel the world and go and work with these cultures and an international cast and have this spy thriller that's not just about character but also action and suspense, they're very challenging films as a producer to make, creating stories, creating set pieces that serve this character [Ethan Hunt]. — Tom Cruise

It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job. I really don't think about my career, in terms of planning it out and what this does for me. — Kristen Stewart

I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time. Even though it's only 200 people in the audience, and a movie like RoboCop is going to be seen by many, many people, I know I'd be much more nervous doing a play than being on set shooting. — Joel Kinnaman

I'm here to tell you, though, ladies that the term "gold digger" is one of the traps we men set to keep you off our money trail; we created that term for you so that we can have all our money and still get everything we want from you without you asking for or expecting this very basic, instincual responsibility that men all over the world are obligated to assume and embrace ... KNOW THIS: It is your right to expect that a man will pay for your dinner, your movie ticket, your club entry fee, or whatever else he has to pay for in exhange for your time. — Steve Harvey

'The A-Team' compared to making 'Narc' was a breeze. There's a whole other skill set and whole other kind of bone structure that goes into making a movie like 'Narc' versus 'The A-Team.' — Joe Carnahan

I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me! — Louis Armstrong

What's really important is storytelling. None of it matters if it doesn't support the story. I thought The Avengers was an appalling film. They'd shoot from some odd angle and I'd think, why is the camera there? Oh, I see, because they spent half a million on the set and they have to show it off. It took me completely out of the movie. I was driven bonkers by that illogical form of storytelling. — Wally Pfister

That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob's silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor's actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben's eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who had
become one of their own, a comrade in distress. — Mary Potter Kenyon

Sometimes you can't even find the director on a movie set. Sometimes you don't want to find the director on a movie set. — Stanley Tucci

I personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don't want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my real life. — Sydney Pollack