Taylor Hackford quotes:

It was the era of Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson; they all had a certain look.

Russell Crowe is very difficult, but it's worth it. He's the real thing. I can tell you this. Russell Crowe was just as difficult before he was an international star as he was afterwards.

This devil loves mankind because men are going to always make the choice that will send him into ascendancy. He's been winning the game for a long time.

The director's job should give you a sense of music without drawing attention to itself.

I really believe you can predict when someone has a great attitude, a real well of talent.

But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.

Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.

When I finish a film, I put it away and I never look at it again.

But, unfortunately, sometimes that affirmation creates a sense that you deserve special treatment and recognition in areas where you're not so talented.

The SAS is the most elite of the special forces in the world. They are not people who go out and advertise; they keep it inside. They don't want anybody to know about them.

I try to get the best performance an actor can give.

It isn't glamorous until after the film is finished, and you are at the premiere and getting your picture on the cover of magazines.

I'm not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They've got to take control; I can't act it out.

Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.

I love actors and I understand what has to happen within a scene. Any scene is an acting scene and actors never act alone, so there has to be an interchange. If it's a dialog scene, if it's a love scene, it doesn't matter because you need to establish a situation.

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification, and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time, there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.

And it's a question of how far we're willing to go in order to let the ego shine, in order to let that beacon penetrate not only the local scene but the world.

An actor has to embody a role.

Music has always been an important thing to me in my life and understand I've worked in the music business.

Show business is one of those things that people can use to get themselves out of the lower rung of society.

If people are worried about the size of their trailers, I kind of say their priorities are off.

I make films about working class people.

It's much easier to work with an unknown.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

I feel very comfortable shooting music, and I think you can see that.

I make films about working class people. All my films have always been about that. For example, the brothel is a workplace. It's aberrant, but a workplace nonetheless. I was more interested as opposed to glamorizing and saying, oh, this is a great erotic place, it's a place of business. The commodity is sex.

My creative partner is a writer, and he's got an executive producing credit on this film. We've made three films together and I would never underestimate the impact of a writer.

The most disgusting, appalling horror of our world that we live in, to me, is sex trafficking and the enslavement of men and women, boys and girls, in the sex industry. That is the most horrific, horrific thing that's happening and it's happening in all of our towns here in Los Angeles, in New York, in London, in Paris, all over the world, and I think that's really what has to be addressed.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

We all get paid very, very well, and we have responsibilities.

Well I don't think I've scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles.

When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.' .

You'd be surprised how many movie stars still care about the work.