I actually think actors both are drawn to playing real-life historical people and are terrified.
I am not going to do anything unless I am afraid of it.
I loved musicals, and I loved Barbra Streisand, and I loved Louis Malle. My tastes were very bizarre, but the thing they all had in common is that they took me out of my life and made me feel something.
I formed this thing called the Half Foundation, and what I tried to do is quantify hiring practices in Hollywood. Half the population is women, so half of the storytellers should be women. Fifty percent of all the directors in my company are women, and it will forever be that way.
All the things I have done at one point or another have fallen out of fashion, and there's nothing better than trying to bring something back to life.
At the end of the day, a divorce is a divorce, and a break-up is a break-up. They are essentially small matters of the heart. They are human stories.
I was very much raised by my grandmother, who actually was Bette Davis - looked like her, acted like her, talked like her. Probably, it was just out of my love and affection for my grandmother that I was interested in Bette.
I love Olivia De Havilland. She is forever a lady.
The greatest thing that you have when you're a showrunner is this opportunity to create worlds.
If you look at 'American Horror Story' or 'Crime Story,' these are visceral, action-packed, sometimes bloody episodes of television. They're not 'feminine.' They're not about sexy women sitting around looking beautiful, drinking lattes. These episodes are calling cards to show companies like Marvel, 'Look, women can do these kind of movies.'
I only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on 'Welcome Back, Kotter.' And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did.
I believe most people don't go into show business unless they've been majorly unloved as a child.
For me, growing up in Indiana with cornfields and churches, I was always very intrigued by the Academy Awards - they were a big event. That was the one night of the year when all of the glittering movie stars got together, and I used to love that night because, as a child, it was a way to dream for me.
In television and the movie business, the people who are promoted and the people who are mentored always look like the white guys.
I find that women are much more comfortable showing their emotion and inviting you into their emotional landscape.
I love actors, but I really love actresses, and I really love actresses whose work touched and informed my coming-up years.
When I started, you couldn't do anything. A gay person trying to write a gay character in 1998 - it was so difficult.
One thing I always do is just tell actors that I'm as afraid as they are, because I can sense that, and I feel it, too.
It's a weird thing, my shows. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel because I go about the casting process so slowly that it does feel like an instant family.
I think the great thing about a television set is that it can be turned on and off, and you don't have to watch it if you think it's going to be something that you're not going to like or learn from.
