The talented actor needs craft. When you do a stage play, you do it once each night in chronological order. In a film you're going to wind up doing a scene 15-20 times, just by the nature of the process. If I tell you a joke once, it's funny. The more times I tell, the less funny it is. How do you get to the point where you can laugh again? You also may have to cry again and again.

Just five years before that the Russians were our allies

Everyone can walk and talk. Your job is to create magic.

Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Hitler probably thought he was a wonderful guy doing some wonderful and righteous work for Germany.

My mantra is "stay perpendicular." Horizontal is not as good. Half the people that came along and up with with me are either gone to another dimension or don't remember what they had for lunch. I'm fortunate. I don't know why. I just want to have a good time.

I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop

A good director creates a playground for actors, and lets them go. The trick for a good director is in casting properly, and creating the playroom, and then they'll get stuff that they don't expect, and can't even direct. All the audience wants to believe is that whatever is happening, it is happening for the first time. They want to see the people within the work exchanging dialogue and action in that moment. There are not a lot of actors that can do that.