I had 'Push' and 'The Paperboy' next to my bed for many years. Those are some of the great, great novels.
— 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.
I wanted to make a black 'Dynasty.'
At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving.
I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills.
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.
The ratings board is completely different when it comes to film versus the television arena.
I've met Shonda Rhimes a few times, and certainly she's an inspiration for me in television.
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.
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.'
I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful.
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.
There are servers, and there are people that are served. There's something contradictory about that in a democracy, certainly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Theater was always in the backdrop. Nursing was a way to pay the bills. I wasn't a nurse; I had a nursing agency.
I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world.
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.
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.
Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in.
I always question if somebody else is going to love my films. I think that's what art is about - it's so individual.
Some of my friends don't have a cell phone. Patti LaBelle doesn't have a cell phone.
America is fickle. You never know what they're going to go for.
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.
I like to show the grey area in all my characters.
I have a partner, Danny Strong; he's an incredible writer and, really, my backbone. So when we don't see eye to eye, it's painful.
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.
I went back-to-back from 'Paperboy' to 'Butler,' literally with no break.
I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.
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.
I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.
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.
My dad was a cop. My mom worked at various jobs - she worked as a homemaker, a bank teller, a bartender.
My kids tell me to Instagram, so I do that. I have a few thousand followers.
I want to learn. I want to stretch my muscles as a director and work under different circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not really vegan. I'm vegan-ish. I have a piece of lamb every now and then.
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.
I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.
I hate white people writing for black people; it's so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices.
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.
I want to go to places that are unexpected of me because people really think they have me pegged.
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.
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.
Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.
