actors Quotes

I don't think any actors love taking their clothes off on film, unless you're an exhibitionist, which I'm certainly not. Those are the scenes that you actually dread doing. But, so much more goes into this role. As an actress, it's all about reality, and I'm not a prude. I'm not someone who judges other people for taking their clothes off for roles. I'm not going to show everything, but nudity here or there doesn't faze me.

I think I would co-direct because I love actors and I've got a very good eye. I'm not a second-guesser. I don't think that I would be very happy, getting inundated by financial issues. I would love to co-direct with somebody because that would be a real freedom and an adventure, and then I could leave all the pain and misery to them. I'm not glib about it. I would take the responsibility to make a really good movie.

Having been an actor, I always want to leave room for the actors to find their comfort zone, so I don't like to be too rigid in how I plan my shots. It's different if you have weeks to rehearse and you can rehearse on your sets or in your locations and you can plan that out with your actors, but in modern independent filmmaking, you don't really have that time. You have to have a certain level of improvisation.

As a director, you want to be really connected to every part of your set, from your actors all the way to your camera operators. Everybody is a part of the creative process, and if they feel like they're part of a team versus just being a tool, they're going to give you something special.

At a certain level, great actors who are successful actors don't have to worry about it. They can just go for it because they believe in themselves.

One of the greatest things I've learned, as an actor, was how to talk to actors.

I already love acting and I love actors, so being able to communicate with actors and to bring performances out of them, and to tell a story and aid them, is really exciting for me.

A lot of why we become actors is to fill a void that we have and a part of that void is to live out and tell stories that we've lived or that we hope would have been different in our own lives.

There are so many filmmakers who are so talented, and actors and writers who work so hard, and it's really hard to let your work enter the world.

Honestly, puppets themselves are actors effectively. The joy of puppetry is that it is very simple and low-fi, which I love.

When I have failed as an actor I've always thought it was my fault. But when I direct something, I wouldn't want the actors to think it was their fault.

In the case of two actors connecting with each other and trusting each other, our bodies have memories without us having to consciously think about it, so rather than think, \'Oh, I must think about my daughter dying,\' you just let that go and trust that you have all the emotions you need in there, and by losing yourself in the scene, that stuff kicks in without having to spend the day thinking about horrific things happening to your own child.

One of the reasons a lot of actors go into the business is that for a short period of time, you get to be other people who you can only fantasize about being, by and large.

[In comedy] you never want to leave the actors hanging out to dry. So you need to come up with funny individual stories for each character, and then you do this sort of comedy geometry, weaving them together. Once you've got a funny structure and you know why the scenes are funny, then you get super funny people to say your own lines, say their own lines, say things in their own way, and every scene is a live rewrite in front of the camera.

That takes a lot of confidence to let your actors come up with something that could be theoretically funnier than what you had envisioned originally.

I always felt like I could be funny, but there was a part of me that always judged actors so harshly... I thought all actors were dumb-that they must have serious emotional problems. Even if they don't, that's the perception I had of them. I didn't want anyone to see me that way.

Actors, writers, directors - that triumvirate of creativity - we have to rely and trust each other to be able to get to the final product.

When actors aren't filming they just go to their dressing rooms and relax.

To be honest, I would like to have worked with Peter Sellers, because when people talk about classic British actors, you talk about Lawrence Olivier, and Peter Sellers was just in the most amazing films.

Actors always want you to believe something else even though that's the truth and to do that well it's almost a dying art.

I think there are probably a lot of actors like me who I think probably struggle to feel comfortable in their own lives, and acting in some ways provides a safe context for them to live out emotions that they possibly repress or live out experiences that they are not afforded by virtue of circumstance.

I'm sure there are directors who don't like to work with actors and don't know how to be sensitive to actors.

I'm fascinated with actors, and I've never quite understood the process.

Sometimes what happens is that, when you micromanage actors and moments, it just doesn't quite live.

I fell in love with that movie [Now You See Me]. I liked the actors. I thought it was an interesting world. When they called me with the opportunity to direct the next one, the first question I needed to address was, what are we going to do to make it different? How can I add something to the franchise? If I can't add anything, then there's no reason for me to do it.

Critics should be to actors what ornithologists are to birds: they can write all they want, but it shouldn't affect them.

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

Even when I was young I wanted to be an actress. I knew the actors and the paparazzi. It was just kind of always in my landscape. It was never directed at me, but it was always somewhere so I could see how it operated and I could see it from afar and go 'Wow, that's not really glamorous, it's kind of exhausting not having any privacy.' So it was never something I pursued. The first time I saw the billboard for Pretty Little Liars I almost got into a car accident!

I know what I like in other actors: truth. That's the best. It makes you say, 'OK, I'll go with you on this.'

I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.