The Butler director Lee Daniels tells Oprah Winfrey: 'Your acting sucks' From left: Director Lee Daniels, Cicely Tyson, Oprah Winfrey and Lenny Kravitz attend The Butler premiere after party in New York. Picture: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images Source: Getty Images SHE may be one of the most powerful women in the world but Oprah Winfrey's not so big she can't be told when she's messing up. That's at least according to director Lee Daniels who told the chat show star and media mogul her acting sucked during a take on her latest movie. Daniels cast Winfrey in his movie The Butler, her first film role since The Color Purple, the 1985 Steven Spielberg film. Her role in the earlier movie won her an Oscar nomination but even so she was reluctant to make a return to acting. Daniels convinced her to join the cast of the The Butler, which is inspired by the true story of Eugene Allen, an African-American butler to eight US presidents, who lived to see Barack Obama take office. But when the camera rolled on her first scene she may have been regretting the decision. I said: 'No! That sucks! What are you doin'? It's not real! It's fake!' Daniels told Hollywood Reporter. She was like, 'Huh?' - just sort of reeling from that. It took her a minute to understand not being in charge. But I think she almost got off on it. Oprah Winfrey, left, and Forest Whitaker in a scene from The Butler. Picture: Anne Marie Fox/AP Winfrey rose to the challenge and her performance as Allen's wife is earning talk of another Oscar nomination. I said yes to The Butler because Lee Daniels was relentless. I did it to stretch myself," Winfrey told the website. I did it to say, 'All right, can you do this again?'