Quotes About Actors

You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.

Most actors nowadays are models turned actors. That's why a lot of young actors are terrible. You have to learn how to act. It is not something that you can just do.

We just assume all the great actors are in New York first and then L.A. second, and it's so not true. There's such amazing talent everywhere. It's exciting that now that there are these sort of new Hollywoods or new filmmaking communities that really benefit from these great faces and character actors and leading actors that just are fresh and exciting and bring an authenticity to the piece.

Indian actors, because of the format of our stories, need to be good actors, and be able to perform emotional sequences, do a bit of comedy, dance and singing, action, because all of this forms just one film. In many ways I'd say there are greater demands on Indian actors than there are on Hollywood.

I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say.

Brad Pitt is a dude who just wants to make good movies. He's not afraid to surround himself with the greatest actors, which I always appreciate because I've also seen actors who only want to surround themselves with weak actors because it makes them look better. That ends up making a poorer movie.

Well, actors get very frustrated with giving control to other people. They have their own ideas and wants for their characters. Warren Beatty once told me that he thought actors ended up directing out of frustration. If you have a strong sense of how to communicate a film, you should direct. The problem is that it is a huge commitment. I'd rather direct a play than a film due to the time. A movie can tie you up for a year or more.

The Muppets have such a great tradition of bringing together all of genres of actors and all ages of actors.

I love stage actors. The pool of world class actors that have done theater [is big], there's a higher opportunity of grabbing somebody from that pool.

There are so many young talented actors today whose work I respect and admire - Ryan Gosling is probably primary among them. I take inspiration from so many amazing actors.

There are a lot of things that dancers can do that actors cannot and actors can do that dancers cannot.

Some actors, and especially the younger actors, they come into the job with a lot of attention on how they behave and everything when they're not working. Sometimes that can be unfortunate because the work call is pretty intense and the preparation for it. If your focus is there, then the actual doing of the job will be fun and enjoyable. But if you're so involved in trying to be interesting and a character and everything when you're not working, it can get in the way and people get goofed up.

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen.

You hear stories about directors using manipulation to get actors to do certain things, but I think when you're working with professional actors, it's all about trust. They can do anything you want, it's just a matter of them understanding what you're looking for, and the reason why.

An actor is looking for conflict. Conflict is what creates drama. We are taught to avoid trouble [so] actors don't realize they must go looking for it. Plays are written about...the extraordinary, the unusual, the climaxes. The more conflict actors find, the more interesting the performance.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

The Dutch film industry is a pretty small community, so within Holland, I think most actors know each other and have worked with each other. The actors that are working internationally - that's a small number.

I like to do theater and hopefully be effective. Most actors, at least contemporary actors of my generation, can't do it. They don't have the chops.

As actors, we have the opportunity to work with many directors. Directors only work with themselves and other actors. They never know what it is like to work with another director. So that relationship that one has with a director is entirely always the king.

If the role is right and it's another situation of having a benevolent genius at the head of it, someone who likes actors, and will protect the actors from the ravages of reality-TV drama. It's a brutal world, and you need to have a strong creative team who can stand up to the network.

Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

If the audience gets everything, if they see the photography and notice that it is good, then the story goes out the window, but if you become involved with the lives of the actors and forget that you are seeing mechanical devices on a huge screen - forget the make-believe - this is the job of the director to involve the audience with the actors.

The idea the actors are the most important people on a film set I think is very stupid. Actors are the most replaceable people there. There are literally millions of us. There's very few people that can operate a steady-cam. The numbers are a lot, lot fewer for that, you know?

I think most actors are shy. I really do. The greatest actors can disappear. I had friends call me the Blend-In Man.

Playing a drunk doesn't mean being a drunk, only bad actors try to be drunk. A real drunk tries to be sober, he wants another drink. How a character hides their feelings tells us who they are, no one shows their feelings except bad actors.

I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does, which is try to find scripts written for white actors - or Jodie Foster, who reads scripts for male actors.

I think that certain directors are better at choosing actors that match well with each other. And I have feelings about actors and who I think I'd work well with better moreso than others.

I love that process in which there is no safety net. Then the actor also can allow mistakes, because there's no such a thing as a mistake. You're working with good actors, that thing that starts as a mistake becomes actually the life of what is going to follow in the scene. I find that it is fantastic, and for me it is easier than for the actors.

There are some actors who can only play themselves, but good actors must really be separated from the people they play.

Your actors need to trust you as a director, but normally, I think you just need to have an open communication between the actors and the director. I think the director needs to really paint his or her vision to the cast and let them know the kind of mood that he or she is making. I think that's very important.

If you have a great part, you have the opportunity to give a good performance. The greatest actors get the best parts, and the best parts make the greatest actors. There are plenty of people who are as talented, who just never got the part.

After working for years in Hollywood where the actors have taken over, it was a real relief to get down there and not only have some children, but also have some actors that had no attitude.

I know there are different kinds of actors, but I tend to have less effective relationships with actors who have a very private process - who really need to do lots of internal work, so that I become merely a witness until they're ready to share.

I like actors who are themselves. I know in America you like actors who change their nose or wear a lot of wigs, and they like to take pretty girls and make them super ugly.

Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.

When you work in film, you have to be pretty fluent in explaining your vision, especially when speaking to actors, and I found speaking to actors to be so challenging and intimidating on set.

The problem for me is not that Schwarzenegger is governor, but the extent to which even politicians who are not actors are functioning like actors.

I think there's that weird bastardization where musical theatre actors are treated as almost like vaudevillians or circus performers - that we're somehow not good actors because we sing and dance.

You don't often get a chance to record with the other actors who are playing the characters, mainly due to the fact that you don't have to, the actors' schedules are all over the place, and it's difficult to get everyone in the same room.

We are all from different cultures. Heath's [Ledger] Australian, really. I'm from here. Ang's [Lee] from China. But I think Ang gets very close in preproduction and rehearsals. And then he allows his actors - I don't think scared of actors, but I think he's scared of getting in on the scenes he's watching. The space he's watching. So he just totally disconnects from you while you're shooting.

Are there differences between black actors’ opportunities and white actors’ opportunities? Yes, there are. It’s been said.

I think all actors are supposed to be character actors.

I don't know how other people perceive the lives of actors, but my life is fairly ordinary. I go to work, I come home, I put my kids to bed. If I'm home in time for dinner, I have dinner, and then it's bedtime.

I spent about a year and a half doing technical post work on 'The Fountain'. Although I do like the process, I think my favorite part of filmmaking is the actors.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

At best, I think of a director as a magnet. You get all the metal fillings in all the individual actors and crew, and get those filings moving toward your magnetic direction.

There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers, great actors, great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that, because I'm 24, I don't have a family, I don't need to make tons of money, and I'm not dying to get famous.

The most obvious ones inspiring me are probably women in political life. There are also many women in artistic endeavors, but if they're painters, you don't necessarily see them, or if they're actors, you see the role they're playing. In political life, you see women of enormous courage and smarts and humor, and that releases the talent, especially in little girls who are watching.