Jennifer Yuh Nelson

I've been asked about the glass ceiling a lot, and I don't think of myself as some kind of crusader going around smashing glass. I don't feel like I had to - and that is a very, very strong flag showing the people around me made it, so I didn't have to.

I think in the experience of growing up and realizing who you are, what your place in the world is can be quite scary.

You have to figure out how you can step forward and affect your own life. I think that sense of empowerment is actually really positive, specifically for the young generation because they've been bystanders in their own lives for a while.

I don't believe in overcooking the actors too much. Especially when it's a real performance that I'm looking for.

I want a space for people to feel safe and be creative. Actors want it, too. They want to feel like they're listened to, and they're safe to experiment.

I always want to do a big finale.

I like action movies, and I prefer to watch a bad Hong Kong action movie to just about anything else.

I've been watching things like 'Master of the Flying Guillotine' since I was 5.

I like to draw, and my drawings are what yell and scream for me.

Qing Cheng Mountain was a direct influence on the mysterious final shot of 'Kung Fu Panda 2.'

My producer for the first 'Kung Fu Panda' movie, Melissa Cobb, is an amazing woman. She's supersmart and helps push everyone - male, female, anyone - to do their best.

The great thing about computer animation is that all of those environments exist as three-dimensional worlds, so these VR worlds already exist.

I walk into a room, and people see me as a director, not a woman.

I'm a hard-core geek.

I like action. It's not typical, but it's a passion.

Going into live action, the perception I had was that to be a director, you had to be loud, you had be physically fit, wear cool hats, have a beard, and yell, 'Action!' really loud. And I'm none of those things.

I couldn't imagine screaming 'Action!' on an outdoor set over a wind machine or whatever.

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of YA movies. I haven't watched a lot of them.

If you have a movie that doesn't strive to go to a certain emotional point, you can do anything and it will be fine and funny. But if you have something pretty emotional at its core, you have to make it right. You don't want it overwrought or unearned. Everything has to be moving towards this one thing.

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.

Every movie goes through that U-shape where you start with 'Oh that's a great idea. I love it.' Everything's possible and then you face 'Oh, we can't do that, and that's impossible, and that's a bad choice.' You go the practicality of it. And then you come up to 'Great.' But that middle part is when you don't have results yet.

I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

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.

When you make a movie, it's just so personal and then you put it out in front of people and it becomes something else.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!