Laura Ziskin Quotations

I describe myself as someone who was always putting on a show, even when I was a little girl. I wanted to be an actress but I liked organizing everybody and putting on plays. I was a producer.

What's great about making movies is the sort of additive process of bringing people together and having an idea and watching the idea be added to and at the end you have this thing. It's really a collaborative experience.

When I was diagnosed I didn't know how epidemic cancer was. You find out that everybody you know is touched by this disease.

For me as a filmmaker, I do the projects I'm really excited about.

You know I'm proud that I was able to develop and produce movies that I wanted to make.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004.

I think being a producer makes you a problem solver, so you kind of go, "Well there's a problem. What do we do? How do we solve it?"

I had very few skills. If I hadn't been a producer I'd been a failed actor. That would have been really disastrous.

I think it's hard for women to be directors, particularly in the feature world because, biologically, your peak career-making years are also your peak baby-making years, and that's just the truth. And those are choices women have to make.

Most movies don't have the ability to find an audience. So the movie plays out very quickly in a lot of theaters to get the biggest gross. So that demands that we make things that are hits before they open. So they have to have the elements, they have to be franchises.

Cancer is everybody's cause.

In some ways, the most rewarding thing I've done were the two times that I did the Oscars, particularly the first time because it was really like the ultimate "Let's put on a show," with every great movie star in the world available.

Movies are arguably the most influential, important medium in the world. They have a tremendous cultural impact. Because women are now making movies, then women's ideas, philosophy, point of view will seep into that culture. And that's never happened in history. Ever, ever, ever. We can't even see the impact of that yet.

In my world, the hero always defeats the villain, the boy always gets the girl, and cancer is no more,