Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Directing is a huge amount of work with very little payoff, and a quarter of the money, and nine times more time spent.
Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. It's not right. Someone's gotta say it. They said it. I applaud them.
There are some older women out there who are just knockouts, real beauties, and they're not getting the roles they should.
If I like the story and it's well written, and it's a character I want to play and they'll pay me, then I decide to do it.
It's not good for people to have the safety net too low... People can take care of themselves better than we allow them to.
Ultimately, a more experienced director realizes that you've got to stop sometime and just move on. They're braver about that.
That's pretty much what every scene is about, getting people to see your point of view. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
I'm not religious. It's an issue, 'cause I've got two little kids, and I feel you can't grow up without knowledge of religion.
I love making movies, I love the differentness of it, I love writing. But I've always liked television. I grew up on television.
When Fargo came out, I hired a publicist for the first time in my life. I thought, if ever I was going to make it, that was then.
I was a dog in a past life. Really. I'll be walking down the street and dogs will do a sort of double take. Like, Hey, I know him.
I think theater is powerful. The best experiences I had in the theater are more powerful than the best experiences I had in movies.
Making a mistake means overshooting a scene, shooting too many takes, for instance. Long after you've got it, you just keep shooting.
A good director is very well prepared, and knows exactly how he's going to cut the film, so the shooting is as efficient as possible.
All that back-story stuff doesn't help. What you get paid for is to stand toe-to-toe with the other actor and get him to do your will.
You'd much rather act with a pal, someone you know really well. That way, you can cut all the niceties and go right to insulting each other.
It sure is boring to be around people who are in character all the time. I always find it's closer to mental illness than acting excellence.
What I've discovered is, really, acting is acting is acting. It's all the same. Seventy-five percent of the skills are the same in both media.
The emotions will take care of themselves. You don't have to prod them along. As a matter of fact, you get in trouble when you prod them along.
It was my first impulse, but I chose to play the priest as a true believer who was an absolute man of faith that absolutely supports the church.
When I was in New York, I was making a living. We had a summer house and a car that I could put in a garage. That's something for a stage actor.
Oh yeah, that's the Holy Grail, Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp, he's the real deal, isn't he? He doesn't get the girl, and he doesn't care.
I have been working out for 30 years, staying in shape in the dream that someday I would get to play a sex scene. Finally I get one, and they cut it.
I got an agent. He said, what do you wanna do, and I said, I want an Oscar nomination. That's your job, that's what I'm paying you for. And I got it.
We thought sex was free. Sex is not free. There's a price to be paid emotionally, physically, even legally. Sex isn't a casual thing. It's a huge thing.
I don't watch rushes. My whole thing is to try to stay in the moment with the other actor, and to let it all hang. I'm not sure I'm right on that, though.
Actors are embracing a new aesthetic, which is leaning more toward truthful and simple and direct, as opposed to what we would normally call sitcom acting.
You can skim those stage directions and go right to the dialogue. You can almost read the movie in the same amount of time it will take you to see the movie.
I love women. I always have. I'm not pretending that I understand them, but I just love women. I love being in their presence and I love everything about them.
I do want to do TV, but I'm looking to be a creator, writer, and producer, and perhaps I could be a recurring character. Do 10 shows a year, something like that.
It's hard on an actor when you have to do a scene 45 times and you know damn well that three of the angles a director is shooting will never make it into the movie.
Writers love to write those idiotic, long stage directions, and some of them worse than others. They have nothing to do with the movie. They're just jerking around.
If I had my choice, I would do the same little independent films, but they would have $100 million budgets, so I could get paid a fortune and hang out in a huge trailer.
There are statistics out that say 20 year olds, 18 years olds think about sex 90 percent of the time. They only don't think about sex when they're eating, and that's rare.
I've written a lot of scripts that someone else directed, and it's absolutely vital that, if I'm gonna act in it, then I have to take off the writer hat and let the director direct.
The roughest part is showing up. Once you throw yourself into the scene, it's just great fun to let it all go and not be self-conscious, and stop questioning whether you're sufficient.
We always want to see people strive and see the human spirit triumph against adversity. That's what it's all about because that's what we're doing. We're trying to triumph in our lives.
I'm getting bigger roles, and I'm on location more, and I have a wife and family. I'd rather work less, and I've started to implement that. It was either that or my wife would break my heart.
What actors are good at doing is walking into a situation that should make you incredibly self-conscious and frightened and doing it anyway. That's the gig, pretending that you are comfortable.
With an inexperienced director, a lot of times the days go on to 14, 15, 16 hours. It goes horrendously overtime. And because of the lack of money, they just keep you there, regardless of the hours.
Perhaps there is such a thing as obscene sex, but I know that violence is always obscene. So I don't get it, that you can disembowel a woman but you can't see her tits. Who made that up? That's sick!
I do love comedy, but I'm not brave enough to tackle a script whose goal is to make you laugh. That's tough. The ones that can do it, I tip my hat off to them, but I don't have that kind of humor or mind.
Every scene has two people who want two different things, so there's conflict in every scene. You've got to duke it out, and you've got to get the other person to change his or her mind and do it your way.
Another mistake a director can make is not to be prepared, so you get there on the day to shoot the scene, and they don't know how it should be blocked, and they're not clear on how they want to do a scene.
I've got two little girls, I'm not scared about sex. I'll teach them, it's not going to kill them. But what could kill them is violence. Guns, drinking and driving, these are the real dangers in our society.
As an actor, early on, you learn that the audience is never wrong. And if you think they are wrong, you need to find a different way to make a living. Collectively the audience is smarter than you will ever, ever be.
I am against censorship in any form. I think anybody should be able to make any movie he or she wants and let the public decide. If it's disgusting and they don't want to see it, they won't go. I believe in the audience.
The best thing for an actor to do is take your attention off of how you feel about it, and put it on striving to obtain a particular objective. The happy result is that it brings out all this unexpected stuff in yourself.
The only reason an indie gets made is because someone has a burning passion to do it and won't take no for an answer, as opposed to a big film, which is like a train that starts rolling down the tracks and nothing can stop it.
I'm not much of a preparer. I think sometimes as an actor you need to go out and learn some skills, but in terms of preparation for understanding the character, it's all on the page, and if it's not on the page, you're in trouble.