Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are plenty of bad actors and there are plenty of bad directors. There are actors who will always be bad and there are good actors who you cry for because they're being badly directed or the material isn't good enough.
Usually being a young actor, you've got to go through certain levels of hierarchy, going through bit parts and extra roles and then kind of progressing up the food chain and having the size of your roles grow in that sense.
I have a sixth sense for casting. I just have to see and talk to the actors. I never make tests. I like to work with crowds. I like to get the principals in a crowd. When they do, something else comes off, something special.
When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.
I always love working with young actors, because there's always something to learn. It's always exciting to see the next generation and how they approach things and what's great about them and what's not so great about them.
Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.
As an actor you always want to be challenged and you always want to have someone tell you you can't do something, because I always want to be like "I can do it and I'll show you I can, and I'll do it better than anyone can".
It's pretty boring, working by yourself. The scene happens in between the two of you, and then you don't know what it's going to be because it's a kind of combustion. So, you do take something from every actor you work with.
As an actor on sets, Ive always clocked how hard the crew works, how much longer their days are, how much lesser their glory is - and the fact that their commitment to the work and project is unwavering, no matter the budget.
Actors who are lovers in real life are often incapable if playing the part of lovers to an audience. It is equally true that sympathy between actors who are not lovers may create a temporary emotion that is perfectly sincere.
We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.
I mean, if you are directing actors to do one thing and then directing them to do something else entirely because the one thing you wanted them to do may not work, then you are just shattering their confidence in the project.
I'm still waiting to hit it big. But there was the moment when I didn't have to work at the restaurant anymore, which is the milestone for every actor. When your job is just to be an actor and not to have to do anything else.
I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I've seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they're told they are supposed to be playing comedy.
If you feel uncomfortable on stage, you can very easily descend into a sort of abyss, convinced you're the worst actor ever, that you're a disgrace to the profession, that you're a disgrace to yourself. It's an awful feeling.
We use improv in all kinds of fun ways. Sometimes it's to invent or discover new things, sometimes it's to weird out the other actors, and sometimes it's to create a sense of fun, to find new things inside the scripted lines.
I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.
I discovered early in my movie work that a movies never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
I'll be in a series for three or four episodes, but then I'll be off the series, and downtime, as an actor, is a little more than most people understand. Most of the time you're just sitting around taking coffee with friends.
I've never done that [fighting for arole]. You hear about actors going in and saying, "You've got to let me read for this!" I've never done that. Lots of parts I've wanted and didn't get, but I think any actor would say that.
I realized that public affairs were also my affairs. I became active in politics because I saw the possibility, if we all sat back and did nothing, of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on.
I don't care if people perceive me as always selling out because I'm doing a studio picture. For me, the whole thing is you should be diverse in your choices; that's the beauty of being an actor, you should be able to do that.
The actor shouldn't edit themselves or be anxious. And the actors that I admire are always the ones who are inventive and their imaginative life in free-willing. It's a director's job to go, "No here, don't do that, go there."
Actors make a bunch of money and they are superstars and then all of a sudden they are 35 and they are an old man and then you never hear from them again. So they basically live like a king for a decade and then they are done.
Juan Hernandez was an actor out of New York, but what made Juan so great and what made Omar so great was that they both already knew how to box, so we didn't have to take them into a gym and teach them how to throw a left jab.
You are [as an actor] aware that you don't want to repeat stuff, but you want to use what has worked. But you don't want to be accused of just going over the old thing, you know? You want it to start growing a little bit more.
When I was seven, I said, "I want to act." When I was 10, I realized that films exist, and I wanted to be in them. Not a comedian, I wanted to be a dramatic actor. Films just seemed such fun, and like such a great thing to do.
People often find it surprising that actors find photo shoots difficult, because you're very concerned about what's going on externally in those things when you have to be concerned with what's going on internally as an actor.
I have realized that I hate going to the premieres of the movies that I'm in. Because I feel this tension after the movie is over that everyone feels obligated to say something nice to you. It's so unnatural and uncomfortable.
Movie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings.
We tried to do a show once every three weeks to a month. We'd always do a new show. It was not successful. It did not become the Matt & Ben show, but it taught me what I like to do as an actor and what I like to do comedically.
A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.
I'm always surprised that certain actors have Twitter accounts. I guess they use it in a way that works for them. But I'd rather that people had less access to my personal life. If I could keep it that way, I'd be a happy lady.
Part of what's cool about being an actor or being in this industry, frankly, is to be able to travel to distant lands. That's part of the deal. I always thought when I was growing up, "I wanna be an actor and go see the world.'
I never wanted to stay in one genre; I never wanted to be pigeon-holed or defined as the actor who only worked in one genre. I want to be able to work in all different genres. For me it's fun, and that's how I grow as an actor.
I like TV in the way that it moves quickly, I like the pace of TV because I'm that type of actor. I like to go-go-go. I don't have to do 50 million takes of something. I guess I'm not that patient. I really like the pace of it.
The hardest thing for everyone, for the writer, for the director and certainly for the actors, is not to panic when they're doing a certain line for the tenth time because everything ceases to be funny after it's been repeated.
I did all the musicals in high school, and I loved it. And then I got to theater school at college, and was like, "No, I'm a serious actor. I want to do Shakespeare. I want to do classical theater." I took myself very seriously.
Dustin Hoffman said this one time, that if he hadn't made it as a film star, he would still be happy as a character actor because he was a character actor because of his face from day one, so he would always work in the theater.
I don't believe in leaving a scene in because it was really hard to shoot, or because it's the reason you took the movie, or because you always wanted to work with an actor . . . If it's not making the movie work, get rid of it.
Being an actor is such a humiliating experience because you are selling yourself to the public, your face, your personality, and that is humiliating. As you get older, it becomes more humiliating because you've got less to sell.
The big thing for actors is the level of commitment. So, if you know something's already happened, there's not a whole lot of whys and hows that go down. You just innately commit 'cause it happened. It does help with commitment.
I love working with the same actors repeatedly. That happens a lot. It's kind of inevitable, especially if you work with the same writers and directors and you start to form a company of actors. You gravitate towards each other.
I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
I wanted to be an actor and I wanted to be a performer. Like Hugh [Grant] said earlier, we might all have this weird gene. Hopefully I will continue to have the talent to allow that gene to play itself out for as long as it can.
There are many actors who'll make their living in other areas, and they'll say they don't like theatre. What they're saying is that they're afraid of theatre because they know it will separate those who can from those who can't.
Acting can be a difficult business. When I was younger, if my mates were doing better than me, I might be a little bit envious, but as I have got older, I love to see actors cracking on and succeeding. The same goes for writers.
I got to work with Dustin Hoffman on a film called 'Billy Bathgate.' I got to work with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn and Bob Zemeckis on 'Death Becomes Her.' There are still a few actors out there that I would like to work with.
I've had wonderful collaborators. They're very different, just as actors are. Working on a show with Nathan Lane is different from working on a show with Chita Rivera. It keeps you on your toes because it's different every time.
Theres just a big group of actors in London. There are new ones coming in all the time, who are looking for work, and established actors who are interested in working and like to work. To be a working actor in England is a life.