Quotes About Actors

Your choices are very important. The only thing you have as actors are your choices: the option to say no to something. You don't want to take on a really bad job and be terrible in something - especially in film, because if you're bad in it, you're bad in it forever.

You can't create chemistry. In fact, the chemistry between two actors is for people to see, sense, and judge. The only thing we can do as actors is to come on board individually because we feel the same kind of passion for a script and for a director to cast us because he feels that, as actors, we'll do justice to that part.

I go to conventions all the time. I'm not one of those actors who's public-shy, meaning I don't mind when someone comes up. It doesn't happen often in the real world because people don't recognize me because I was in makeup, but when it does, I don't usually mind it at all if somebody says something.

I've done so much drama on television that it's very hard to sit down and watch other actors work. I find my interest is more in the real world.

'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

Theater actors like to change character roles. They don't like to always do the same thing.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors.

Once I went to film school, I realized that film directing was actually much better than theater directing, because you kind of get to stay in control of it all the way through. You don't relinquish the piece to the actors like you have to in theater; you stay in control through the very end.

Now, when I started my theater, the modus operandi was having the actors stare right into the audience.

And so I've always been fascinated by the technical end of theater, and a lot of my closest friends are not actors, but in the other end of the business.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

I like to do theater and hopefully be effective. Most actors, at least contemporary actors of my generation, can't do it. They don't have the chops.

I always wanted to do films. I'd gone to New York early in 1976 and did a lot of theater, but I really wanted to chase the paths of people like Pacino and Lemmon and those guys. Alan Arkin. Film was where I wanted to go.

All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.

Part of the problem with producing contemporary political theater in America today is that many theaters don't have flexibility or resources, be it hiring a lot of actors or staging a work that might be tough for some audience and board members.

There are so many talented actors in Chicago, I have to go see shows when I'm there. A lot of these actors, who I've seen when I'm in Chicago in theaters, are technically amazing and never have an opportunity to showcase it on a bigger medium.

Theatre is a sacred space for actors. You are responsible; you are in the driving-seat.

I like working in theatre now and I think that once you've done a certain amount of films most actors love working in the theatre because of the camaraderie.

I find the theatre faintly embarrassing for the actors performing on stage. It seems rather showy-off in an undignified way.

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.

Many people say that theatre has no money, but it has been the stepping stone for the best film actors of our times like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Paresh Rawal, etc.

I never achieved my first goal in the National Actors Theatre, which is to have a permanent Acting Company.

In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors.

I had great faith in Irish actors, that they'd be hip to the whole theatre thing, and they are. I had no illusions of coming over here as some kind of big shot. It's been a learning experience for me too.