Quotes About Actors

We have so little control as actors, but there are ways you can maintain your integrity. I have to say I've never compromised myself in this career once. I've never done something I didn't believe in.

Actors are intelligent. Yet, many of them do not communicate well. That's what makes it so hard to have a relationship with one.

I think the female actors are far more intelligent than the male actors.

The most important thing in a love story for me is the intensity and passion that my lead actors bring into playing their characters.

Documentaries for me always felt kind of limiting. I wanted to go bigger. And I also love actors, and I love performance. So feature filmmaking was always the intent.

In drama, you're interacting with other actors to tell the story. The camera is like the theater: it's the artistic fourth wall. In a screen play, you don't look at the camera and communicate with it. But with hosting, you're looking right into the lens and talking to the people. It is a different style, and it's fascinating.

Actors improvise on the stage and enjoy interacting with audiences.

Our dream as actors is to tell interesting stories about interesting people.

We always try to leave room for the actors to come in and make discoveries on set, in their interpretation of the scene. The shot list is scaffolding.

A lot of writers want everything put on screen, but it doesn't work like that. The screenwriter brings her own imaginative interpretation, just as the director and actors do.

The cool thing about doing a play is that the final interpretation of a piece is turned over to the actors.

You write a character, but in essence, it's just a concept of what it could be, and then actors come in and they have their own sort of interpretations and thoughts. If you respond to those and then go forward with them, then it's kind of like magic to see the idea you had become alive and in the flesh.

I am inspired just by the way a scene can be interpreted by the actors. It can make a huge difference on the type of music that you write. It's best for me if I don't work at all on a project until the movie is shot and I have some sort of edit in front of me.

I want to work with great directors. I want to work on good material with good actors. I've probably done 20 movies at this point and a lot of independents. It's been an incredible ride and I love it and I'm just going to keep going and doing what I'm doing.

There were usually protestors of some sort, but they looked more like actors in a nostalgic revival than genuine revolutionaries.

When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.

For me it came from the material. It was so well written and brought the opportunity to work with great actors. And of course the opportunity to 'mince about' was an added element that I wanted to take advantage of!

I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they'll play him long after I have.

When it comes to casting, I've been so lucky. I've worked with unbelievable actors who make me look better than I am and take the written word and make it honest.

The learning curve on soaps is through the roof because it's a three-camera setup. There's a master and then there's two singles. And the great thing about soaps, and soap actors will tell you, is that when you get your line wrong, they don't re-shoot it. They just cut to the person listening.

Being on stage is a seductive lifestyle. My advice to aspiring actors is think twice. People sometimes go into acting for the wrong reasons - as a shortcut to fame and fortune. If these goals are not attained, they feel a bitter disappointment.

A lot of child actors keep acting for the wrong reasons.

I was on 'Murder She Wrote' with Angela Lansbury. She was fantastic... she was lovely to everyone, she was always on time, prepared. Whereas when I worked with Bob Hope, he didn't know his lines. He had to have these huge big cards... he hardly said two words to me all day.

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.