I'm sort lucky in that for me, I'm a writer now. I started as an actor but I'm a writer and so things like 'Wilfred' and shows like that are where I escape to.

Colloquialism is the toughest part of what we do, as foreign actors, because there are certain sayings that you guys have that absolutely don't make any sense.

I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I've dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream.

OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

As an actor, being in a relationship you have this opportunity to have something really exceptional, because you don't have a regimented schedule or lifestyle.

For me, there are a lot of things you can imagine as an actor, and then there are things that you know in your bones and in your cells once they happen to you.

We're trying to set up a movie for me in the near future. It's going to be similar to the story of how I got discovered. Kinda like my own version of '8 Mile.'

At one point you think, well, it's funny, I could just be a starving actor... So if somebody were to pull the plug right now, there'd be no room for complaint.

There are a lot of actors that are more talented than me at Second City who quit it before they even got to a paying status. Weird luck. I had no other option.

What you choose to do professionally is a reflection of yourself and I take that seriously as an actor. But even as a filmmaker, I take it even more seriously.

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy.

I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality.

I have made 70 or so films. In all my films not a single actor, a single extra, was hurt. Not one. So statistics are on my side when I say I'm clinically sane.

I think the toughest thing about being an actor in a film is to be with a director who doesn't know what they want. And that can be really, really frustrating.

How many impressionist painters painted the same damned thing? How many actors have played the same part in renditions of a play or dancers do the same dances.

Athletes and actors do really crazy things and we do them under weird circumstances because we love what we do and because we take things in an extreme manner.

As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

I always tell actors when they go in for an audition: Don't be afraid to do what your instincts tell you. You may not get the part, but people will take notice.

Now at my age I understand how sad it must have been for some directors or actors at the time the talkies began. Because, really, a whole continent disappeared.

James Ivory comes close to the actors for the first rehearsal. He more or less lets you direct yourself and then will only correct you if he finds it incorrect.

Directing was a natural thing for me. Actually, it was far less stressful directing than being the lead actor. I was able to have my input in all aspects of it.

You know, it's hard as a writer to lose characters (and actors) you like. You really don't want them to die because you're not going to get to see them anymore.

If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it WILL bore the actors, and will then bore the audience, and we're all going to be back in the breadline.

I'm thrilled because I think that, you know, everyone has gotten what they wanted. You know, I just wanted to be (there) surrounded with the best actors period.

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

We exponents of horror do much better than those Method actors. We make the unbelievable believable. More often than not, they make the believable unbelievable.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

Because I wanted to have a place that I could create everything that I that I never had as a child. So, you see rides. You see animals. There's a movie theater.

That's one of the things of being an actor. You have to push any knowledge of any future, at all, out of your mind. You never know what's going to happen where.

Actors need steely determination. It's a tough profession with plenty of knocks along the way. You have to be very determined and never take 'no' for an answer.

Once asked if he felt wearied by the constant onslaught of autograph seekers, actor Gregory Peck replied that he would be more worried when they stopped asking.

I used to be very controlling with visuals and editing, and I would pretty much craft the performances; now I have learned to trust the material and the actors.

I became popular very young. I viewed myself as just a young actor trying to figure out how to do well, and, you know, making mistakes and learning and growing.

I don't consider myself an actor, for me it's employment. Like the actor who's a waiter a lot, I'm an actor when I'm not on tour, in that that's a job I can do.

I'm not tough when it comes to people criticizing the people that I protect, and those are the actors. It makes them scared to do it again for another director.

The only pitch I have to movie people is the same as this one: Just give me $8 million. I'm not telling you what it's about and I'm not telling you who's in it.

In L.A., being an actor is like a pastime, everybody there is like, "I was on this reality show; I'm an actor." It becomes a word that is loosely thrown around.

I don't like making a film and having the actors in character too much in magazines and on the net and everything else. Because you want to keep something back.

Gareth [Edwards] was very open to just shaping the performances and the scenes to fit what was happening with the actors and the storytelling that was emerging.

I had to learn how to become a real actor, I had to suffer and be rejected and face that 100 times just like every actor. It wasn't like someone handed it to me

As a painter you're responsible yourself, 100 percent. In film, you have the editor, the director, the other actors. It has the advantage of not being solitary.

I'm a journeyman actor. My experience as a journeyman actor is that you have to go where the work is. I've never been the lead; I've never been in that position.

I always say that, if you have great actors and great storytelling and great monsters, and you mix them together, nine times out of 10, it explodes in your face.

But here I am today recording this and I'm in the studio with all the others on a clean mic. It's extraordinary, the actor's found a way of doing it for himself.

In England, and all over Europe, and all over the world, actors act until they die. They get old, really old, and they're still working. They just keep doing it.

It's a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you've been trained as a classical theatre actor. There's always a depression in the theatre.

I think it's very rare, as an actor, that you get to a script, or an idea of a script, and you go, "Oh, I just have to do that!" It fell into place very quickly.

So to answer your question, Im not entirely sure how I ended up where I am today, in the sense that nobody in my family is an actor. It just happened by mistake.

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