Quotes About Actors

I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that ‘actors are great liars.’ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be ‘actors are terrible liars,’ because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What’s called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary.

I love actors. Part of that is my theater background and being a writer who cares about performance. Actors have usually chosen their profession because they have a dream of doing it and they want to express something about the world. That's the same thing that I have with writing. Most of the good actors get into it for those reason, rather than for reasons of fame or fortune, or anything like that, and that's where I'm coming from, as a storyteller.

You're always going to have ups and downs - if you look at the careers of a whole bunch of people I respect, some of them have good movies, some of them have bad movies. I remember Andrew Garfield said that the only power we really have as actors - or one of the main powers we have as actors - is our choices. We can make interesting choices, but as soon as you've made that choice, so much else is in play: the director, the script can change, the other actors. All you can do is try to make interesting choices and, once you're in it, just do the best you can.

Particularly, the actors, to have analyzed the script in great detail from the point of view of their specific character. So that they have a handle on exactly where the character is in the chronology of things. In that sense the actors become your best check on the logic of the piece, and the way in which it all fits together. They become essential collaborators. The main thing is you have to work with very smart actors.

The best voice actors all have a live performance background. And are competent, fearless, incredibly creative actors.

You don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? "Oh, we will always need actors." Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background.

In enforcement, you always have to have both a focus on the really worst actors - you know, gang bangers, in this case, drug dealers, that sort of thing - but also routine enforcement because think about, for instance, the IRS. They don't say, OK, well, if you're not a money launderer, it doesn't matter whether you fill your tax return out right or not. They have both. They go after the really bad actors and they have a kind of general, routine enforcement.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from LA, are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.

The process of finding an actor is always difficult and there's always so many variables that come into play. Also, actors sometimes carry baggage, fans associate actors with certain parts.

At a certain level, great actors who are successful actors don't have to worry about it. They can just go for it because they believe in themselves.

It's very rare that you get a part that you actually like. People have a misconception, whether it be because actors lie or because you're reading interviews from giantly, massively famous actors, but you don't just get offered parts, all the time. You actually have to work to get them.

If there's anything I know about directing, it's how to make actors comfortable. It's where I started and it's what I know, and it's what I love. I like when the actors are really partners and I want them to be excited and I want them to surprise me. I don't want them to be puzzle pieces.

The '80s were a time of technical wonder in filmmaking; unfortunately, some colleges didn't integrate their film and theater departments - so you had actors who were afraid of the camera, and directors who couldn't talk to the actors.

I wanted to be an actor ever since I was five. My grandparents - my mom's parents in New York - were stage actors. I think indirectly I wanted to do it because of them. My grandfather would tell me stories about Tennessee Williams and actors he worked with in New York. He had such a respect for acting and such a love for storytelling about that world. I grew up hearing him tell tales of it.They were never encouraging me or discouraging me to take part. They were always feeding me with theater.

It's like they talk about how American actors have the method and English actors just kind of switch views faster. And John [Hurt] is telling me the story as he's sitting in that witness chair, and they're putting the final touches of makeup on. And he goes, "Hold on a second," to stop his story so he can do the take. And he does this incredible take. They go, "Cut." And then immediately John goes, "Anyways, so Alec, he's playing the chess." And I'm just going, "Holy crap." You get whiplash from those kinds of quick turns!

A lot of British actors will look at America as a land of opportunity. In England, there's such a small pool of working actors of color. There's such a small amount of work that is actually produced in the first place.

I think all actors want to change. When you do something many times, over and over, you want to do something fresh. But movie is still my business. A lot of action actors want change, but no studio wants to spend money on something that is not guaranteed; not proven. I think it is very difficult. It is hard to change.

There are a handful of actors who sustain interest because it's exciting to watch them get better at what they do. I want to be one of those actors.

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.

In Chicago it's really a case of the play's the thing - people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors - not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.

An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.'

Because national borders are eroding, because of the growth of non-state actors. It's a different kind of a world. We are tied down by a tiny little country - Iraq. It's amazing, given the disparity in military economic strength. It's a world where most of the big problems spill over national boundaries, and there are new kinds of actors and we're feeling our way as to how to deal with 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.

Actors are born, good actors are trained. Dancers are born, good dancers are trained.

I think the key that differentiates the good actors from the mediocre ones that are still trying to come up, is that the good ones know how to listen. It's like being in a jazz band. They know how to listen to what the other musicians are playing. And where to come in and where to sit out. That's my approach to being in an ensemble cast and working with any kind of actors in a scene.

Competition 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. The good actor is the one who competes, willingly, who enjoys competing. An actor must compete, or die...Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won't help in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek.

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 started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.

I enjoy comedic things. People don't understand it's the hardest thing to do. We have a ratio of 25-to-1 between good dramatic actors and people who are considered good comic actors.

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

The best actors in the world are the actors who don't keep the walls up all the time and allow themselves the potential to be embarrassed.

Some actors might just do one thing, and another actor does another thing. I do an awful lot of preparation with the script, really. What I do is repeat the script, over and over and over again. Through that, it's almost like it seeps into my enamel. I'm reading all the characters, as well as my own. That is where the bulk of my preparation goes into.

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.

I've always been a searcher, you know, a hunter. I'm certainly not the only one. They say actors shouldn't get political and everything, but you can't separate yourself. You can't disconnect yourself from anything.

As a director, you want to be really connected to every part of your set, from your actors all the way to your camera operators. Everybody is a part of the creative process, and if they feel like they're part of a team versus just being a tool, they're going to give you something special.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors.

What I've grown to hate in my 'old age' is shouting directors. I find anybody who screams and shouts to be difficult to work with... especially because the people who scream and shout tend to do it at runners, and not at the main actors. They make a great amount of noise and it's often at someone who is an easy target. I love working with people who are calm, even if my role is peripheral. I like people who realise that this is just a film... that we're not going over the top in No Man's land and screaming for our lives. There's just nothing to be gained by volume.

A film just doesn't involve actors, a director and a producer, there is also the cameraman, the sound engineer, the music composer, the lyric writer. So many people come together to make a film. When we all feel satisfied with the film that we have created it's a win for all of us.

Actors, to a certain extent, never grow up, you see. It's an extension of being out in the back yard with a stick, only you're being paid to do it. It's borderline madness.

When actors are the real deal, all that star whatever goes right out the window and you're there to tell a story.

I think actors always have that fear of unemployment so when the opportunities are there, you just jump on them.

Large-budget movies start to lose focus on the story and the actors, and it becomes purely about the visual, or CGI, or framing with the cranes, or whatever it may be.

I really enjoy talking to actors or filmmakers that enjoy that process of creating and how they go about doing it.

Well, I’ve been in several films including documentaries, but the big blockbuster, I was hired as advisor to the actors, I was trying to make Jesuits out of them.

To really get to know people and discover humanity, which is what I truly think writers and actors do, you've got to be interested in other human beings, you have to be interested in humanity in general, and you have to do some discovering of humanity and different people.

Actors are responsible to the people we play.

Sometimes actors come in, you record them, and they do their role.

I've always been quite mature because of the way my parents brought me up. They were very good at talking to me like a person rather than a baby, and I was around so many actors and directors from such a young age because my dad is an actor. I was more comfortable with adults rather than actually being an adult child.