Quotes About Actors

Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the time away, and any trouble you get into through being well known. It's not for the acting, that's for sure.

I'm not famous for my back story investigations I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script.

Bill Murray, we've got to get people worthy to be on the screen with him, as opposed to just a bunch of random... with no disrespect... but a bunch of random local actors.

Most actors on most days don't think they're worthy.

I understand that there are a few roles out there and tons of actors. Just because you don't get the big break doesn't mean you're not worthy or that what you have to offer isn't valid.

Most actors will tell you this - I don't really know how to connect, empathize with, or make worthy of any revelation a character that doesn't have love in there somewhere, that doesn't have an idealism or an empathy in there somewhere.

Mike and Heather and I rapped once or twice in New York and then we all wound up on a train together on the way out to Maryland. I think it was about a month and a half from the time we got cast until the time we shot the thing.

For actors, when you first get the project and you see that it's a Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman-produced project, right away, from an acting standpoint, you go, 'Wow. That'd be great to be part of that. What a career move that'd be.'

I've worked with actors before where I was like, this is not working, and then I've seen their work on the screen and I've been like, Wow, that was a really great performance. Because there are a lot of elements with film. It's not like stage. It's not a kind of performance art anymore; it's a highly tuned kind of collaboration - a symphony.

Actors wrestle with it all the time; they want to be liked. They do. They want to play something that people are going to like.

Magic Johnson, former basketball player, may run for mayor of L.A. in the next election. Remember the good 'ol days when only qualified people ran for office like actors and professional wrestlers.

I think that between the egos of the actors and the wrestlers in this country we are taking away from the truly dedicated and informed people who should be getting their voice heard.

I've always loved Don Cheadle and Jeffery Wright and even Sam Jackson.

I'm addicted to 'Scandal.' Joe Morton is the devil, and I love him. I am addicted to 'Boardwalk Empire.' Jeffrey Wright is the devil, and I love him.

A couple of my favorite actors are Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright, and, may he rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman. I've had an opportunity to see all of them onscreen and onstage.

I don't really write with living actors in mind. I guess I write for dead actors. I'll think of like, you know, Burt Lancaster would be good in this part, and so on. With 'L.A. Confidential,' it was like, 'Wouldn't it be cool if Dean Martin played the Kevin Spacey part?'

There are actors who can pull of a writer's lines; I am not competent enough to do that.

Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer's script and actors' performances.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

I really think that as good of a job as you do as a writer, you're absolutely indebted to the actors that have to deliver that material.

I can't separate the process of writing from the visual process. I'm speaking only for myself here, but I'm a highly visual writer. In my imagination, when I'm thinking of a scene, I think of every last detail of it: The space, the color palette, the blocking of the actors, the placement of the camera.

I take for granted that for the imaginative writer, the exercise of the imagination is part of the basic process of coping with reality, just as actors need to act all the time to make up for some deficiency in their sense of themselves.