A biography for Lee Danielshasn’t been written yet.
“I don't profess to be Shonda Rhimes by any stretch of the imagination, or Dick Wolf. They're icons. I'm a filmmaker.”
“It's hard for me to accept love. I wish I could lie to you and tell you that it's easy for me, but it's not.”
“Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be.”
“I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.”
“I look at my movies; I call my movies 'the kid.' It's like I'm giving birth. I'm in the cocoon, you know?”
“Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it.”
“I drank from colored water fountains and from the white water fountain just to see what it was like when I was a kid. What shocks me is that these kids today don't realize that this happened in many of our lifetimes.”
“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.”
“When you have a lot of siblings, you always do something to feel special.”
“I always question if somebody else is going to love my films. I think that's what art is about - it's so individual.”
“The rules are: The only ego is the film, and you have to serve the film.”
“I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.”
“In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans.”
“I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful.”
“Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in.”
“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 was always intrigued with European cinema, and hated most American cinema. I didn't like the one, two, three - boom! style, with a neat and tidy ending. That was never my scene.”
“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 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.”