Actor Quotes
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Every actor is a character actor.
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I was sure that none of the other wonderful actors I had met for this role would have such truthfulness, would have such courage and self-awareness of auto-destruction as River does.
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I have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.
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For an actor to remain a child is rather important. It's a childlike, dreamy thing, acting, if you think about it. It's the sort of thing children fantasise about, playing cowboys and Indians in the street. I think that acting is just a highly refined development of that.
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Usually, I'm the kind of actor where you show me once or twice, I can do it. I don't do it creatively, but I know how to do the process.
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There is a need for aloneness... for an actor.
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You can always tell when an actor has grown a 'rhino skin' to protect themselves. It comes across on screen, and they aren't believable. They're dead in the eyes because they've been told a million times that they're the greatest actor that ever lived. If you don't realise what's happening, and get your feet back on the ground, it can be the worst thing that ever happens to you.
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Don't worry about telling your actor what to do.
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Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed.
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The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.
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People need to realise what real happiness and success is, because success as an actor is fleeting. You can be up there one day and gone the next.
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You couldn't escape the literary atmosphere in our home. I grew up as a Britisher. I played a protagonist of every nationality in stage adaptations of Shakespeare and Brecht. I graduated from Yale. When I moved to the U.S., I realized with some amount of surprise that I was seen as an ethnic actor.
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I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.
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As a young actor, it's important to see how the greatest in the industry work... diva behavior is never it.
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I'm an actor - it's not brain surgery. If I do my job right, people won't ask for their money back.
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New York is a great place to be as an unrepresented actor because there are so many 'open auditions' that you can show up for without being submitted by an agent.
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It wasn't my childhood fantasy to work with Truffaut or be in obscure films. I like Midnight Run better than I like The Bicycle Thief. It was films like Die Hard and Bladerunner that made me want to be an actor.
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Bogart was like Henry Fonda - proud and happy to be an actor.
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Uta Hagen is our greatest living actor; she is, moreover, interested and mystified by the presence of talent and its workings; her third gift is a passion to communicate the mysteries of the craft to which she has given her life. There are almost no American actors uninfluenced by her.
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An actor who's a control freak, that doesn't work. We have to be malleable. We cannot come in and try to control or dominate.
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In theatre, you learn the story is more important than the actor.
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Theater really is an actor's medium: you're on stage with no director anymore, whereas in film very rarely do you get much rehearsal other than running through the scene very quickly. Then everyone comes in and shoots it.
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I always feel like I have to prove myself as an actor, otherwise you get lazy if you're not slightly terrified that you're going to fail all the time.
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You can't be an actor in a small town-you have to go to New York or L.A.
