Actors Quotes
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There are actors who make no decisions about how to play something until they're in the moment, looking into their scene partner's eyes. So they're completely available for whatever happens. And those are actors who tend to avoid getting into patterns.
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I'm like this mercenary actor going from show to show - people love to hire me, but then don't want me around much.
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Certainly as actors, and maybe as directors, you've got to hang on to something childlike. You've got to know what play is. I haven't worked with Mike Leigh, but I know him very well and there's something open in his eyes about what's in front of him. And the same is true of Alfonso in a Mexican, mad way. There's an enthusiastic response to something. Neil Jordan, the same, when he gets excited . You just want to know there's a human being in there.
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I try to do the same thing when I'm with young actors who are new and unsure. I try to do the same thing for them that I saw Laurence Fishburne and Angela Dasset do for all of us on Boyz n the Hood.
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Every actor will tell you it's so much more fun to play the bad guy because usually those characters are more complex and more broad and more interesting, and have more sides to them.
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I put steam on the table by being an actor. That is how I live. The longer I live, the more expensive it becomes. So I do my work. And I can't be immensely picky. How many beautiful scripts come in one's lifetime? I have had more than anybody, practically.
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All you have to do to be a camera actor is tell the truth.
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Most times when people pitch you as being perfect for a part... they don't look at you as an actor who can transform. A lot of people are so literal.
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Actors today go into TV, which I don't consider has a lot to do with acting. They only think of stardom.
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As a director, I do very few takes, because I feel like you hire the right actor and they'll do the job right. And the directors that I've worked with and had the best luck with - Jason and [ Steven] Soderbergh and the Coen brothers - all have been that kind of director.
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We all, as actors, have to fight these battles, where it's like, 'OK, that's a little far-fetched.'
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As actors, we were fighting that tooth and nail because of fear, because language is a crutch and dialogue is a crutch, and it's so easy to just have a great writer write you a line.
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When I used to do tours, I'd be anxious and nervous on the plane returning to New York. I now realize the reaction was because I was coming back unemployed. Actors are constantly being put to the test.
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Behind the footlights there is always the applause, which stimulates the actors. On the screen it is a different matter.
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The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell.
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I am not an 'instant' actor... to really do anything, I've got to try it five or six or a dozen times.
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We stayed very close to each other [with Leek Kirk], and Lee was amazing. We'd go through the script together, rehearsing it before every shot with the other actors. He was just easy to work with. We were able to put it in my language, which was really important.
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I would love to direct but I feel like directing is a whole separate craft and so I tend to respect it as a separate craft that I would need to study first. So, right now I'm still trying to do certain things as an actor and until I get bored of that or I feel completely fed by that then I'll move into directing.
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I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.
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I love working with actors. That's what the set really is, for me. It's my time with the actors.
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Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.
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God knows I've had productions where there were actors in my plays who were making more money per week than I was.
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I had no natural gift to be anything - not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches - not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.
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Ideally I'd like to be working steadily as an actor: movies, a TV series, that sort of thing. I've been through a few different TV development cycles, and they didn't work out. When the time and project are right, it'll come together. Like I tell a lot of guys, it's not a race; there's no finish line.
