Quotes About Actors

The biggest challenge Malayalam cinema faces is territorial. We operate within a small territory in Kerala, and the Malayalam diaspora across the world in comparative terms is quite small. But we have world-class talent in terms of technicians, actors, and writers.

Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible.

You know, actors say, 'There are no bad roles, there are only bad actors.' Well, comedians, because they're also writers, believe that there are in fact bad roles.

One of the challenges of being a director is often you don't get to work with your peers. You know, writers can write together, and as a director you get to work with so many wonderful actors and writers and designers. But it's pretty rare that you get a chance to partner in that way with another director.

I think Star Trek has been very double-edged for all of us - as actors, writers, directors.

Soaps are a double-edged sword. There can be prejudice from some writers and producers who feel you will lower the currency of their work if you've been in one. You have to rise above such ludicrous prejudice.

With every episodic, there's a learning curve where writers try to find the voice of the characters by way of the actors. Many details are found along the way. On 'Caprica,' although the franchise already existed, we were creating an entirely new world full of new characters.

It's always interesting for me to watch the pilot of an established show because you see how the writers and actors weren't really sure what the show was and what the dynamics were. If you look at the pilot for 'Seinfeld,' for example, it's practically unrecognizable.

I've been fortunate in my career to have the opportunity to pick and choose the parts I play. I've also been lucky to always be involved with quality actors, quality directors, quality writers.

It feels as though a very disproportionate number of main characters are writers, because that's what the writer knows. Fair enough. But nothing bothers me more in a movie than an actor playing a writer, and you just know he's not a writer. Writers recognize other writers. Ethan Hawke is too hot to be a writer.

There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.

It's well known that actors are lousy writers.

We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master's degree program, and we want them - to expose them to everything.

It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.

Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare.

I come from a tradition where the writer writes a play for the actors, rather than for himself, and the dialogue is made to work onstage, so it needs actors to help shape it. So you never get a play right straightaway.

I really admire Mark Ruffalo and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Vincent Gallo, for example, who writes and directs and acts in his own films.

The dream, I think, with any project is it starts with an idea, and then somebody writes it, and the writer hopes that a director comes on and makes this piece of material visual, and both the director and writer hope that they can have actors come in and bring something to it that neither one of them expected, elevating it along the way.

I'm turning into one of those people who writes to the actors on 'Coronation Street' - a really obsessive fan.

What he failed to recall was that the deeds of reality are just as inane and childish, and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.

Unlike films, plays don't take place in the past. The fear,anxiety of the actors is happening now, in front of you. If performing is risky, we identify with the possibility of granduer and disaster (The Body and Seven Stories).

I think that most actors, and they're a very strange lot actors, very strange people, but I think that they attempt to keep in touch with the child.

I believe, and this is perhaps too nationalistic a view, that the American style of acting puts actors quickly in touch with each other, so that their continuous presence in a company, as in England, is not absolutely necessary.

Directing is a whole series of things that would be awkward socially. But I love that. I love actors. Talking with them, touching, laughing, crying.