Quotes About Actors

I think a lot of actors, especially actors with a theater background, have a musical ear. A lot of actors just want to be musicians anyway, and a lot of musicians want to be actors.

When I got into the movie business, working with actors was the one thing I was really weak at. I didn't know what to say to actors. They scared me and intimidated me. The actors that I've worked with who have had a lot of experience, or who I've even grown up watching as a kid, were really scary. I was like, "What am I going to say to this person?" But, I've matured. It's fun. I understand what actors do now.

In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors

In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done.

I really like to work with theater actors. Theater actors tend to do lots of independent movies, and those are the actors that I like.

I learned early on to abandon all those preconceived notions you have about other actors and it's served me really well. I usually just try to empty my mind of that. I love meeting actors and I love working with actors.

When actresses play actresses, or actors play actors, they have to find another level.

There are a lot of directors out there that don't like to deal with actors, I think. Many of them have said something like, in the future they will actually manipulate the actors on their computers. But don't believe all this.

I think that some of the writing, directing, and the content is better than a lot of movies sometimes. Actors, well artists in general - actors, writers, directors - what we all care about the most is good work and being able to create something that is really resonant and meaningful.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can't get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

I prefer to take actors and put them in real settings and real locations and real situations rather than create artificial locations that serve the characters. It's just much easier when you are walking down the street with your actors to do that in a real street that's still open with people on it, rather than to close it off and bring in extras.

I watch the energy between the actors. That's the most thrilling and interesting thing to me about watching a movie, what the actors are doing.

There are 100,000 actors in the Screen Actors Guild. Only 2,000 of them make more than $75,000 a year.

We got the best actors imaginable [in Kung Fu Panda]. If we could have made a wish list I don't think there would anyone else we would have added. Yeah, we've been blessed with exactly how amazing a cast of actors we have. To have someone like Bryan Cranston, who is not just an amazing actor, but who has such a range.

Even in the early '90s, I was already starting to mix professional actors with non-actors. I always enjoyed working with non-professionals, because their performances are very natural and unaffected.

Competition [in a scene] is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors.

It's not often that I read about actors that I'm going to be meeting. I get to read articles about actors who were going to come in, so I get to see someone and say, "Oh, I read that I was going to see you. It's very nice to see you."

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 some actors who are rehearsal actors, and some who are not. I am not. Having said that, I don't know what I am talking about.

It is through you, actors, that the forces which are understood by millions and that tell of everything that is beautiful on earth, find expression. The forces which reveal to people the happiness of living in a widened consciousness and in the joy of creative work for the whole world. You, the actors of a theatre, which is one of the centres of human culture, will never be understood by the people if you are unable to reflect the spiritual needs of your time, the now in which you are living.

I've always felt there are three sexes: men, women, and actors. And actors combine the worst qualities of the other two.

People forget that actors are actors, who are looking to put on the clothes and the character, and then shed it just as easily.

I love Woody Allen. He's very clever, always thinking, and he's great with actors. He lets actors do what they want to do and occasionally he'll give them a specific kind of direction.

I think good actors - good, collaborative actors who see themselves as leaders in a given production - can and should offer ideas that have nothing to do with wanting to direct themselves.

I love working with actors. That's what the set really is, for me. It's my time with the actors.

My true role is to get actors to understand what the camera is doing and what my intent is so they don't waste their good stuff on over-the-shoulder shots and wide shots. They need to know when we're going in to get something important, so they know to really go for it. No human being can give you 1,000 percent on every single take or shot, so you need to let them know what you're heading for. It's important that the actors know they're being looked after and being recorded in a way so they can do their best.

I think there are all sorts of ways of turning into an actor, and there are a vast variety of different actors. You know, you interview plenty of actors and you know they come at it from a different direction and acting means different things to a lot of people.

The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.

The actors I was most impressed with and who were influencing my taste were all movie actors, so I always wanted to do movies but I didnt want to go to Hollywood and become a waiter in the meantime. The chances are really slim that an actor will be discovered in Hollywood. ... Ive never had to compromise myself for a job, ever.

I had the chance to play with a ghost of the museum. The function and the institution are gone - it's closed - but there is still the building. I was looking for something between an experiment and an extended ritual. I asked 15 actors to be in this museum and take the position of the museum's personnel. I put this small group under certain conditions and influences, interpreted by another group of actors or by real professional performers, like a magician, a psychic, a model, a hypnotist, a singer, a psycho-dramaturge.

Well, acting is cheap; I knew all these actors who weren't in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old.

The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it.

AMC has a track record for finding actors who have been working actors but not names yet and casting them.

I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel.

Every film you work on is different, and that's part of what it's like for anybody who works on a film, is to learn how to work with others. Learn from top to bottom. Actors have to learn how to work with the director and the director has to learn how to work with actors, and that's not just those two departments.

That's where you can find things and modulate your performance and give the other actors something fresh to respond to. We've probably all worked with actors who when it's suddenly your close up, they get sleepy. I don't like that. It's selfish acting, and I won't tolerate it.

Lot of the scripts I've been in with other non-white actors haven't been great. Lot of non-white actors ain't all that great.

I started doing yoga in my 20s. I did teacher training, that was what I was going to do if acting didn't work out. I started teaching other actors right at the beginning of the yoga craze - people still thought it was a little weird, but a lot of actors I knew were getting into it and didn't want to look foolish in class. So I started teaching them!

The fact is, these are actors playing parts, and maybe it's not such a bad thing that people be reminded of that. Both of these actors gave heart and soul to the Twilight movies, not only during shooting, but also by navigating so graciously the whole life-in-a-fishbowl aspect of the phenomenon. Above all they have always shown great respect for the fans who made these movies such a success. Now it's time that some of that respect be returned to them.

Most actors are very deeply passionate about their line of work. I suppose there are probably people who sell insurance policies that are passionate about it, but I'm thinking the ratio is a little higher for actors. But, I may be wrong.

I mean, the actors that I admired were Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, an actress named Barbara Harris. And Greta Garbo. They were great actors.

I honestly don't have a lot of friends that are actors. Most of my friends I've known since sixth grade and are out of the industry. It gives me a sense of reality rather than surrounding myself with a bunch of actors.

I ask my assistants if they're retarded all the time. When the camera is on you, of course, actors have the ability to make it real. For me, if I'm not talking, it is a problem. I have so much more respect for actors after being in front of the camera, and I realize that the hardest part is when you're not talking. Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.

With a group of people, a troupe of actors in the theater, you go out on tour, and you're like a traveling circus. It's very sociable, and there's a real community, and it's very intense, and then you may never see them again. That was very appealing. I mean, it wasn't consciously appealing, but I think a lot of actors like that.

I think we can't be naive in dealing with the Russians or dealing with the Syrians. But at the same time, I think we could try to encourage - and I think this is what diplomacy should do - encourage the self-interests of all parties to believe that it is in their best interest to get evil actors or rogue actors such as Syria or Iran, if you try to have less belligerent and less bellicose behavior.

I don't think Indian actors are good. A couple of them are, like Anupam Kher, but not many are there like him in the industry. There are thousand of actors and actresses in the industry, but you can count on hand how many of them are really good; the rest of them are just pretty faces.

You can have good writing, but a great actor will make it feel and sound like great writing. You can have great writing, and mediocre actors will make it feel mediocre. Without the actors, you have nothing.

Hollywood is more concerned about its male actors being in shape than its female actors.