actors Quotes

Actors are always looking for ways to build a character.

I was never able to analyze my own performance that way I can now. I've realized why certain actors work. I think I'm very in control of what I do in there now. I know how to listen, how to make it real and how not to go to jokes, but to go for a sense of reality.

It's easier to be more vulnerable in a smaller environment. It's hard to expect your actors to be able to open up in that way and stay with the level of focus needed when there's so many people on stage.

Actors are always the pawns. They're the last ones in the food chain.

My parents are actors as well, so I grew up around that world. It was always a very romantic, mythical world. They did a lot of theater, so to me an actor was getting to come backstage and dressing room mirrors with bulbs around them and trying on people's costumes. It was very exciting to me as a child.

My advice to aspiring actors and writers is that your career's success is totally your responsibility. You need to make it happen. There is no end point to an artist's work, no set time line you have to live up to.

Actors are a really funny bunch of people, especially the X-Men cast. They're super funny and super nice, and they like to go out and get drinks and dinner and hang out. It's an experience. It's a summer. It's like camp. Everybody gets together and hangs out.

One of the things I tried to do is to kind of talk my actors through the scene, but at the same time let them know how I plan to shoot the film and just give them an insight into the way I'm thinking, so that when they're acting out their scene, they can kind of see it in their minds' eyes.

Your actors need to trust you as a director, but normally, I think you just need to have an open communication between the actors and the director. I think the director needs to really paint his or her vision to the cast and let them know the kind of mood that he or she is making. I think that's very important.

Because of the way we let the actors improvise, it feels like you're watching people react rather than actors reading lines - so I think that's always going to be something I like.

I think a lot of people become actors because they have a great reservoir and repertoire of many different emotions they felt over their lives. It's like having a toolbox, and you go down into the toolbox and choose one or two of those that you need for a particular scenario, or something that comes up in a line.

Working with the actors, working with production designers, working with the creative people who surround the process is really fun, it's really inspiring and I take great pleasure in working with them. That's what's most fun about directing.

I do not know if it is true that all actors want to direct and all directors want to act, but in 1972 I tried directing and decided I had better stick to acting.

Most child actors go through that. Unless you can transition into an adult star, your career is over.

Some stars like to hide behind the whole idea of acting. But really good actors are not hiding at all. They're not afraid to be disliked, to be a little unsavoury.

Oh, the relationship with actors and managers and agents and things is a terrible problem sometimes.

You should never ask actors about politics.

Most actors go, I read the script and fell in love with it; I fall in love with the directors.

Paul and I were both struggling actors. One night he would serve me in a restaurant, and the next night I would serve him. It was what out of work actors did.

At the Academy Award Dinners all the actors and actresses in Hollywood gather around to see what someone else thinks about their acting besides their press agents.

Politicians are actors, too, don't you think? Usually, if you like people and you're outgoing, not a shy little thing, you can do pretty well in politics.

There are a lot of actors in the world, there's a small number that actually get to work as actors, and there is a tiny group of actors that are celebrated in the way that I have been. I feel incredibly lucky.

I hear actors complain about being stereotyped, and a lot of the time, you have yourself to blame. Just don't take the part if you feel like it's a stereotypical part for you. You have control over your life. We don't have the old studio system, where you have to do what they tell you.

When they're good, I like working with new actors.

I actually envy actors who have a persona: 'This is the way I am. This is the part I play.' And do it over and over and over. To me, that's a lot easier than trying to reinvent yourself every six months.

We can only use British actors because everybody's got to talk exactly the same.

I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.

A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over.

I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.

You really have to get out of an actor's head to write because actors only care about their part and it revolves around their part so \'This is the important part because this is the part where...\' .