Text can be fully kerned, tracked, coloured and transformed using a dedicated graphics application such as Adobe Illustrator, then rasterized, anti-aliased and further manipulated in something like Adobe Photoshop to be imported into Director as a pict. This will result in much more attractive and often more legible text at the expense of editability and larger file sizes.
For text that does not need to be modified - or that you specifically don't want users to be able to edit, this can be a useful method. If your text must be alterable on the fly, however, you'll have to put up with less satisfactory typography.
Director does provide an option for anti-aliasing text. The level of anti- aliasing is set for specific sprites via the score. The "Anti-alias text & graphics" checkbox in the Movie Info dialog must also be checked for this to take effect.
The text anti-aliasing is pretty dreadful, though. The purpose should be to improve the appearance and readability of the text, but Director's just makes it look like you've left your contacts out. On the other hand, its anti-aliasing of graphics is much worse...
[ed note: Anti-aliased text was added to Director 5.0; it may be edited in authoring mode and is rendered as a graphic in projectors]