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I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors.

Talent has no gender. People are hiring young male directors right out of film school, off of a student film or off of a film at Sundance for millions of dollars. You can do the same with a female. It's not a risk about the work if you respect the film that they made.

I don't understand why there aren't more powerful female directors. I don't have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material.

Every casting director I've met is a woman.

There are still so few female directors. There are far fewer writers than we'd like to see.

Even after such milestones as Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar, there still seem to be few women in leadership roles.

It never crossed my mind to be a director, and I'll tell you why: because I'm a woman. It just didn't occur to me, but I knew I had to be in film.

I have worked with a lot of really great women directors: Ana Kokkinos; Cate Shortland, who just recently directed a film called 'Lore;' another director, Rachel Perkins - she's an Aboriginal director, and I've worked with her three times now, and she gave me my first film role, actually, back in 1997.

I suppose they call me a woman's director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few.

I don't think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I've had female students say to me afterwards, "I never envisioned myself being a director, since I've never seen women do it." But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we'll see more female directors.