A film's success or failure is strictly on the director's shoulders.

Music and language are a vital element. We as actors and directors offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It's difficult when you're used to owning the copyright and having a landlord's possessory rights - I rent my plays to the companies that do them and if I'm upset I can pull the play. But the only two directors I've worked with are pretty great.

I like directors who have worked as actors. They know the experience.

Some of us are interested in directors but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here where they're all trying to murder each other.

I'm very ambitious. I live in reality but I have dreams I want to fulfill - I want to be a director and I've already started my own production company. But I also have a measure of success that I keep to myself. It's something very personal to me.

In Dreams... well I was slightly overcompensating with that. I was a bit like a director for hire so maybe I was putting too much imagery that was familiar to me into it.

Different people have different styles but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision and everything can be obsessed over.

My biggest role as director on the film is keeping a sense of the overview - how to cast the movie and shoot it in such a way that it will cut together. And how to design the style and tone.

Music is where I have the most creative freedom but I love producing. To me that's kind of where all the action is. You get a chance to have your hands in every aspect of a film. From picking a director sometimes picking a writer to the actors the wardrobe set design editing music and marketing.

Whenever I'm in theatre situations I will go out of my way not to talk about my father but in the film world I can be really proud of my family and say 'You know what: my dad's a really really famous theatre director ' because nobody has any idea.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.

When somebody who makes movies for a living - either as an actor writer producer or director - lives to be a certain age you have to admire them. It is an act of courage to make a film - a courage for which you are not prepared in the rest of life. It is very hard and very destructive. But we do it because we love it.

But it's cool working with female directors because I'm a girl so you do relate to them more. You can talk to them about other stuff like clothes and all that.

The Dead was cool It's a great horror story. I went to the casting director of this movie and talked to him then they called my agent and had me come in and read for it and they wanted to use me.

It's cool for me because I'm a director but I'm also a teacher. I'm a lover of cinema and I love working with people who are hungry and have the energy to really do better work.

If you work in casting it's sort of not cool to want to act. A lot of people think that casting directors are frustrated actors but it wasn't true with any of the casting people I knew.

Ten years ago it was really difficult for a young actress to walk onto a set and disagree with the director and having that be OK and have a conversation about it and everyone be cool with it.

What's weird is that I work with these directors and then I start channeling them. I kind of turn into them a bit - which is cool when you're working with Clint Eastwood.

The first work of the director is to set a mood so that the actor's work can take place so that the actor can create. And in order to do that you have to communicate communicate with the actors. And direction is about communication on all levels.

Not since the steam engine has any invention disrupted business models like the Internet. Whole industries including music distribution yellow-pages directories landline telephones and fax machines have been radically reordered by the digital revolution.

I feel fine I don't care who the director is. All you have to do is know what your doing - all of us - everybody in the business - that's all you ask anyone - you know your job I know mine let's go do it.