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This great Hollywood director started his career at the age of 12 in musical theater, became a professional dancer, and later established himself as a Tony Award-winning choreographer on Broadway.

His first film, Chicago, with Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and René Zellweger, was an international sensation, winning six Academy Awards, including Best Picture of the Year.

He followed that up, directing an entirely Asian cast in the poetic and intriguing Memoirs of a Geisha.

But he couldn't stay away from the musical, and for nine assembled a team of Hollywood A-listers, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, and Penelope Cruz.

He's a proven directing talent in every genre, and that's why fans flocked to his blockbuster smash Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides.

Hi, I'm Rob Marshall and welcome to Hollywood's Best Film Directors, even though I'm sitting here in New York right now.

[music] Here we are in my offices in Manhattan, courtesy of Disney.

I have a wonderful production deal with them and working on some material with them and some movies with them.

And so thrilled to be here on a beautiful September day in New York.

It's always great to be here.

[waves crashing] [music] I come from a, um, sort of an academic background in a way.

My parents are both professors, and I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I have a twin sister whose name is Mara, and I have a younger sister whose name is Kathleen.

You know, we, uh, had an amazing childhood, I have to say.

You know, it was...my parents were very young when they had us.

They really sort of exposed us to so many different things.

And what really attracted us, for whatever reason at that time, was musicals.

And then I went to a great school, elementary school, that really focused on the arts as well.

At the age of, I don't know, ten, I was already sort of doing plays at school and things like that.

The first show I did as a performer that was sort of significant, I think, was a chorus line.

I did Michael Bennett's "A Chorus Line" on tour.

And I was a junior in college, and I took the year off and did that.

Then came back to Carnegie Mellon, where I went to school and finished my degree.

And then I moved to New York to pursue a career in acting as an actor, singer, dancer.

And so my first Broadway show was "Zorba," the Kander and Ebb musical with Anthony Quinn.

And then I did a show called "The Rink" with Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.

I did a show called "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."

Some television, some off-Broadway shows as well.

And then I did "Cats," the show "Cats."

I can't believe I'm revealing that to you, but I did.

I played the narrator cat, MonkaStrap.

And it was an incredibly hard show to do for a dancer, really difficult.

And I injured myself, I got a herniated disc in my back, and I was 27 years old.

And I had always sort of thought that I might choreograph someday, and possibly direct down the line, but I never quite imagined how it would all unfold.

I was always the assistant choreographer or the dance captain of these shows, you see.

I didn't want to dance right away.

I sort of had to heal.

And then I felt, you know, why not do something but not dance?

So somebody asked me to choreograph a production down in Florida, a regional theater, a production of The Rink, a show that I'd been in.

So I did that.

It was the first time I ever choreographed.

And down at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida, Miami.

You know, that led to another choreography job and another choreography job, which led to sort of a directing job, regional theater, Summerstock.

And I kind of got, I learned the ropes of how you choreograph, how you direct in regional theaters and in Summerstock.

And that's, that's, and I never went back to dancing.

Someone asked me if I would choreograph a television musical.

Jerry Herman was writing an original musical for television for Angela Lansbury.

It was at the height of her murder, she wrote, time.

And so I did a TV movie musical with her.

It was the first time I ever was behind a camera working as a choreographer.

And I learned so much.

It was a great director, Terry Hughes, who really allowed me in and taught me how it all worked.

And I started understanding the difference between theater and film.

Instead of the proscenium, you're locked into that and transitions and how you move a theater piece you can cut and there's no front and you can you know you have so much more freedom in film.

And then I was asked to direct for television and that was the first time I was directing you know on film and it was a production of Annie.

I remember I got the call saying we'd like you to direct a musical for television.

I was so excited.

They said we want we want you to do Annie.

And I was like oh no not Annie.

Please Lord.

But then it's interesting I really learned to love Annie in a very different way.

I really saw what it was.

You know it's it's a great score.

It's a it's a classic story very Dickensian in a way.

And I really found my way into it which was sort of more sort of from the human side I guess is the way to say it really less cartoon like that it was done on stage with the curly hair and the you know I tried to find the humanity of it all.

It was a great transition for me from theater to film because I worked with a theater cast.

I had Victor Garber and Audra McDonald Kristin Chenoweth Alan Cumming Kathy Bates all people from theater who had done some film.

Kathy Bates had won an Oscar of course but it was really working with people who knew how I spoke.

So that was the first time I ever said the word action.

I remember I remember actually the first day of shooting.

I was really petrified petrified to say the word action.

And I don't know I think it was because it was sort of like a cliche to say action.

You know so I didn't say it.

I said okay go.

I couldn't say it.

I mean and then by the end of the day I was okay but it took a while.

It took a while for me to really feel like it was okay.

Getting Chicago was a very interesting road.

A lot of people had been offered it.

A lot of people had started it up and it didn't work.

And conceptually it was a very difficult piece to take from theater to film because it's a conceptual piece.

You know, all the numbers in the musical are done as presentational numbers.

And you can't quite do that on film because there's no-- supposed to be no audience.

There's a fourth wall and so forth.

And so people found it difficult to make it an actual musical.

I think it was the combination of having done Annie and having done Cabaret that led me to be able to come in to interview at the-- for Harvey Weinstein.

It was called Miramax then.

They asked me if I would come and speak to them about directing Rent as a feature film.

So I went in to do that, but I secretly love Chicago.

It's my favorite musical of all time.

And I saw the direction that it was going.

I'd seen the script and I explained to Meryl Poster, who I was sitting with, who was the second in charge at Miramax, I explained to her, you know, I'd love to talk about Rent, but can I just talk about Chicago for a moment?

And I had an idea and I pitched this idea of how Chicago could work on film.

And she said, wait a minute.

And she went and grabbed Harvey and that's when I met Harvey.

And that's when Harvey said to me, you know, I've seen your I've seen Annie a million times.

I said, What do you mean?

He said, My children play it over and over and over and over again.

And I thought, Oh, I'm sorry.

I apologize.

He said, No, I can tell how well it's done, how well it's constructed, how well it's directed, he said, which was lovely.

And so I sort of had a foot in the door.

And I was sitting there with Harvey and I kind of walked through how I thought Chicago should work could work on film and I think was the first time that it made sense to Harvey is how to put this musical together for film and he gave me the shot and that's how I get the movie.

you know when I did Memoirs of a Geisha it was so far away from Chicago that's why I really wanted to do it it's such a huge challenge it was you a dramatic piece obviously set in Japan in the 30s 40s 20s 30s 40s actually and it was with a Euro-Asian cast most of them were speaking English for the first time in a film I directed the entire film through interpreters I had Japanese actors Chinese actors and we were constantly having to work through interpreters to speak to them it was an amazing amazing experience for me but I wanted something challenging that's something I was really looking forward to doing and it was it was such so rewarding to work with those amazing actors on that incredible iconic piece.

With the movie Nine I was looking to do another musical following Members of a Geisha.

Harvey Weinstein had wanted to work with me again and John DeLuca who's my partner as well on another musical.

And it's very difficult to find a musical that works on film because for me you have to understand why they're singing.

So I was looking for a musical that had a surreal sensibility to it, so you understand why someone's singing, so I could move back and forth between reality and unreality.

And it was in the DNA of Nine, because Nine is based on Fellini's Eight and a Half.

And so it just made sense.

It gives you that opportunity, that flexibility and sort of the license to sing in something that is sort of a concept piece like Nine was.

And I was excited to work on that piece specifically because of that.

But also I love the music, I love the story, and I was excited about the casting possibilities as well.

Well, Pies of the Caribbean came to me.

I got this amazing call from Jerry Bruckheimer, who's obviously a great producer, and I loved every moment working with him.

And he basically said, "Johnny and I came up with a list of directors.

Gore Verbinski, who had done the first three, decided to move on.

And we came up with a list and you're at the top of the list.

So I'm coming to you first and I wanted to talk to you about doing Pirates of the Caribbean.

I had never thought I would do, you know, something of that scale, that genre of action adventure, 3D.

None of that was in my consciousness.

The ironic thing is that I'd seen all three pirates and loved them.

You know, I loved it.

And I, as a moviegoer, loved seeing them.

And so then I thought, well, you know, it sort of fits the criteria for me.

It's something completely different.

And why not challenge yourself?

So I was really excited to take it on.

You know, pre-production is what it's all about, preparing a film.

I mean, that's where you, you know, shooting, there's so much pressure about the day and making it.

You know, the creation has to happen all in pre-production.

And so, I have a fantastic team of people I work with.

Dion Beebe, cinematographer.

John Meyer, my production designer.

Colleen Atwood, my costume designer.

We normally do films together.

Pirates was a little different because we had a sort of a different group.

But that's sort of my go-to team.

And for me, it's all about that prep.

You know, that's where you discover what your movie is.

You know, you have this idea in your head, but it's just an idea.

It doesn't mean anything until you start putting it on paper and start making sense of it.

Memoirs of a Geisha was a huge undertaking because we were immersing ourselves into a culture we knew very little about.

So we went to Japan, first of all, sort of a core group of us, to really learn about the culture.

And John DeLuca, who choreographed the film and produced it with me, and Lucy Fisher, Doug Wick, and all of us went to really kind of find our way.

And we were allowed into places where a lot of people weren't allowed into-- tea rooms, geisha houses.

Some of the places blocked us out because it's a very delicate subject matter.

So that was sort of the beginning of it.

But then moving into it, we also had to teach our cast.

We had Chinese interpreters, Japanese interpreters.

That took a while.

And I knew that the only way to do this was to rehearse, like you would a show, a play.

And so that's what we did because I had to learn how they worked.

They had to learn how I worked.

I couldn't start without having that time.

So we had that.

We had seven rooms going at the same time.

We had people learning to speak English and working on their script.

And then we had a place where they were learning the Japanese culture, Geisha culture.

There was dance rooms.

There was acting rooms where I was working with the actors because it was slow, where I had to block the scenes with them.

And all that preparation that happened for many, many, many weeks really helped us when we started to shoot.

And background action.

Shooting "Nine" in Italy was a dream come true.

I mean, I just have to share with you one specific moment for me that was really amazing and one of those "pinch me" moments, you know, pinch yourself moments, and that was I was shooting the Piazza del Popolo, a scene with Sofia Loren and Daniel Day-Lewis and they were in a little tiny sports car and they were going around the Piazza del Popolo of course people were gathered everywhere there was Sophia Loren you know in this car and Daniel Day-Lewis and and I was in Rome you know this grand shot shooting Sophia in a 60s sort of sports car and I it was just like how did I get here it was kinda one of those moments she's the most amazing woman you could ever meet the crews are very different in Italy because it's much louder.

I'm not used to that kind of... At one point I remember saying to the AD, "Why is it so loud?

I can't even think because it's like..." You know, they're... I love them.

You know, they said to me something so great, you know, "Italians work to live and Americans live to work."

And that's so right, you know.

It's more... They're more interested in what they're having for lunch.

And they really, you know, in many ways, that's important to them.

And I appreciate that.

I love that, 'cause that's life.

The biggest challenge for Richard Gere in Chicago was the tap dancing.

He'll tell you that.

I mean, he had never done it before.

He's such... He's so stylish and he's such a good dancer because he has style to his body and he's a musician, so his rhythm and tap dance is all about rhythm.

And so he understood that.

But he went to work like boot camp.

I've never seen anything like it.

He used to come in drenched from head to toe with sweat, take off a t-shirt, put another one and go back in the room and keep going and keep going and keep going.

And he was so upset when he heard people say, well, that wasn't him.

That was a double.

That every moment of that tap dance is Richard.

Every close-up of his feet is Richard.

Action.

Want to say hi to everybody?

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Cut.

Hello.

This is everybody.

Want to say hi?

Want to say hi to everybody?

Yeah.

Action.

For me, the tone on set is everything.

I want a place where people feel safe, actors feel safe to try things and do their best.

I want them to feel supported and cared for.

I need a happy set.

I need people to be joyous.

I want them excited to be there.

You know, I think a lot of directors like the opposite of that.

They like the chaos and the tension, and I can't work like that.

It has to be a very positive place.

And so it's very important for me to do that and set that tone and make people feel like they're part of something and they're all part of it.

And I'm not there, you know, they're not there to serve me.

I'm really there to serve them, which is opposite a Once Upon a Time I got an advice from someone on my first day of shooting on Annie who said to me, you know, everyone's here to serve you, a director I had worked with.

And I thought, and I remember that director walking away, and I thought to myself, no, it's the exact opposite of that.

I'm here to serve them.

And that's how I worked.

That kind of tone is important to me.

I love Catherine Zeta-Jones.

She was so thrilled to be doing Chicago because this is where she came from.

We're very similar.

We both started as gypsies.

She's a dancer, singer, sort of grew up in theater on the West End and then came into film.

So we had that real connection even though I was on Broadway and she was in the West End.

There was that real connection.

She was excited to show people what she had in that world.

So when we were She was in heaven because this is from her world.

I remember her going, "Oh, my God, I haven't stretched forever at all.

It hurts."

But it was all like starting again.

And I think she had the best time doing Chicago because she was doing what she loves and loves to this day.

With Pirates of the Caribbean, you obviously were shooting in 3-D, which is a very unique experience.

We were really the virgin movie to take 3-D cameras onto real locations.

The majority of films shot in 3-D are shot on a stage where you can control it against a green screen.

We went to real locations.

We were in Hawaii in real jungles on real ships on real beaches.

You know that's where we were.

We did very little stage work.

So that was difficult because they're very sensitive and you're always shooting with two.

Sometimes one of the cameras will go down there because they're sensitive and so you think you have a great take and like no the cameras are down you know.

So that was complicated you know but I think because we felt like we were you know the newbies doing it there was a sense of adventure behind it we were having an adventure while we were making an adventure and that there's a there was a joy to that I have to say.

Action.

Captain I wish to report a mutiny.

The great thing about Johnny Depp is that we have a very similar sensibility about making film.

It's really important for him to have a great time.

We laugh a lot.

He's so fast.

I mean in terms of like for instance a sword fight.

You know the fight director will show him something once and then he'll get up and do it.

I mean he's so quick.

He's so smart.

You only have to do a couple takes with Johnny because he's word perfect every time and he's just he's a director's dream.

A total director's dream.

We laughed so much especially because Penelope Cruz was pregnant at the time and was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger so we have to keep going up up up up until we're like up here like you know shooting down because you know this wasn't this is getting heavier and you know she knows she'll laugh about it to this day too but Johnny and I we laugh so much about that you know and and anyway we we we really enjoyed being with each other he's the best for me winning best picture was was obviously the biggest surprise I'll never forget the night there we were sitting at the Kodak theater I think it was what it was called then in in in Hollywood Michael Douglas and Kirk Douglas came out to read Best Picture and I know I knew Michael because of through Catherine Zeta-Jones and and he was a huge support of the film and I thought oh that's good you know and we have you know maybe it's good luck and so they so Kirk Douglas opened the envelope and then he ripped it up and I thought oh it's not us and he's mad that's what I thought so you think well we didn't get it and he's pissed because you know and then he handed half of it to Michael and I guess they had planned this in advance but I didn't understand no one understood this and they both said Chicago together it was just one of those moments because you could it was what you know it's probably like this short it's probably two seconds but you know your whole you know every moment is like extended at that point and your whole body goes oh you're you know your heart sinks and then it like flies you know and I just remember Harvey pushing me up on stage you know get up there get up there you should be up there it's ten years ago so so I went up with Marty Richards our wonderful producer and things changed after that because all of a sudden you know you're in that club you're in that club where you get offered movies and and and some of the you have no trouble getting in the door anymore you know where it's like knock knock knock and door slam you know it's you get to sort of you get that wonderful entree and it was it was it was the biggest gift because I never quite saw my life heading in this direction of doing film and all of a sudden I was in this wonderful position to be able to do film.

Sophia Loren I asked her to do nine on the phone and it it was surreal even just speaking to her and she said yes you would you know I said I said to her I can't imagine doing this film without you and she said oh that's very nice well then I'll say yes you know but so but I hadn't met her yet and I met her in Los Angeles we were at a soundstage in Los Angeles and it was a very Hollywood moment because I got the call she's here on the lot it was one of those like classic Hollywood moments and I thought oh my god and then sure enough the door opens and she's coming from the Sun and so all I see is the silhouette she's much taller than you imagine and she literally stepped into the light out of darkness and there she is you know the most beautiful screen beauty of our time you know with those amazing cat-like eyes and those big beautiful lips those gorgeous nose the stature the hair the elegance that amazing body the warmth immediately and I just it was one of those moments where you are completely speechless completely speechless because she's bigger than life she immediately made me feel at home because she's funny and warm and you know irreverent and so right away I had a great relationship with her but what an amazing moment that was for me.

Obviously a series of films that are you know huge in any filmmakers life.

I have many you know from all the President's Men to Singing in the Rain of course to Cabaret Bob Fosse's work in Cabaret I could go on and on and on and on but maybe I'll just stop there because the list will be endless the movies I've done are so different you know I feel so proud of each of them in different ways because they're so different you know for me the one that's I'm most proud of is Nine only because it was such a challenge to make work and I was so excited to work with that kind of material on something very challenging.

In terms of what I want to say to you is thank you.

A. B. I would say I think you have a great range of taste which I appreciate because that's what I love to do.

I love to tell stories but I love to do it in a stylish way that keeps changing up the kind, the genre of film.

And I've had such a great time.

My joy for me will always be working with the actors.

I like to disappear so that they can do great work.

So that's my, that's something I hope you see in my films.

It's been thrilling and I have an exciting road ahead.

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