actors Quotes

I've worked with actors who treat the first two takes like rehearsals. And that's okay. If the camera is on you and we're doing a scene where I'm off camera, I'm treating that as a rehearsal.

I love working fast. I don't relish the director who wants to do 25 to 30 takes, or the actors who insist on doing 25 or 30 takes.

Character actors aren't a brand in the same way that high-profile leading men are.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

I think good actors - good, collaborative actors who see themselves as leaders in a given production - can and should offer ideas that have nothing to do with wanting to direct themselves.

I know there are different kinds of actors, but I tend to have less effective relationships with actors who have a very private process - who really need to do lots of internal work, so that I become merely a witness until they're ready to share.

I watched so many comic book movies where the actors weren't as built as the characters in the book. It made me mad because they didn't look right.

I love working with male actors, and I think there's a tendency to write really interesting characters that would work solely alongside men where they would be in a man's world and have to deal with that, and it creates a lot of interesting storylines. For me, it's kind of circumstantial, but I definitely enjoy it.

All actors think every job will be their last.

All my good friends are actors, really. It's different when you have a family, but they're still the people I meet most often. My best friend is Ian Hart, but then I've known him since I was five.

I'm lucky to just be a working actor. There are so many great actors out there and I'm just lucky to have gotten work.

I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

Most actors and actresses are performative as people.

I guess actors are very sensitive people. We're porous.

One of the things we're taught as actors is restraint - don't jump off the cliff.

I guess winning an Oscar is the ultimate dream. A lot of amazing actors go their whole career without even being nominated. So that would definitely be a goal to reach. It's a difficult one, but I'm aiming for it!

Kelsey Grammer is one of the best actors I've ever worked with.

Good actors, you always know what they're thinking. That's why they're good actors.

Everybody thinks that actors would be really good at bluffing, but I think it's a little backward.

Working with a bunch of actors is like trying to tune each violin.

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.

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

I'm scared of actors with a scheme.

Actors, movie stars, rock stars, I can meet them with no worries - but with footballers I go weak at the knees. All of them.

You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.

I think some actors thrive on working at a much greater pace than I do.

Actors should never give interviews.

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

Do you know what White House correspondents call actors who pose as reporters? Anchors.

I think the best actors in the world are here in New York City. And this city is just so vibrant the energy is just phenomenal. Great crews here. All the technicians, all the artists that work in this industry. I've just been very happy with the body that we've been able to do, especially those films we shot here in New York City.