Quotes About Actors

I would fail if I had to work with stars. And I also can't afford to work that way. I can't afford to have special circumstances for rarified individuals. So, I work with actors who have given me a sign that they're willing to work in these more humble circumstances, in real-life locations.

It is a humbling experience to work with Duttsaab and Amitji, who was my dad's costar in so many films.

I find directing so incredibly rewarding and challenging and humbling and exciting and engaging. Scenes become challenging. Actors bring out the best of you. Circumstances demand you dig deep.

The best way to learn how to work with actors is to have had experience of trying to act yourself - it will teach you humility if nothing else.

I wish actors got more credit for humour.

I've just watched the whole series of 'Flight of the Conchords'. I absolutely love it - the humour, the actors, everything about it.

There's always this hump, this 1-week hump where the first-time actors have to get used to the fact that there's a camera in their face. It takes them about a week to get comfortable.

I'm probably my own harshest critic. If I get a hundred good reviews and one really bad one, it's that one out of a hundred that I remember. I think we actors are hard on ourselves, and I don't know why that is.

I worked in this bar called the Raincheck Room in the '60s; it used to be over on Santa Monica Boulevard, and, y'know, it was a pretty hip place. Lots of actors hung out there.

And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps twenty players, and Tennessee Williams has about five, and Samuel Beckett one--and maybe a clone of that one. I have ten or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

agent Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, had come into his splendid own, fingering better actors.

Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.

I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favourite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is 'The Dark Knight.' Trust me, *this* is the future of this sort of thing.

Casting was a source of amusement. Tatum O'Neal, Darryl Hannah, Gail O'Grady, even Calista Flockart were mentioned as possible

I've worked with some terrific actors. The list of guys that came on the 'Columbo' show, I mean they were world-class actors from all over the world - Oskar Werner, Laurence Harvey, Donald Pleasence, you know... foreigners.

Most of my good friends are my friends from high school or childhood, and they're not actors - they have 9-to-5 jobs. But I've obviously, over time, developed friendships with actors. It's two completely different worlds.

A lot of times you have very ego-driven actors and actresses that stay in their little world, and when you have a scene together, your worlds meet for a moment. But I don't think that makes for a very good cohesion.

Actors get to go to these amazing worlds. In 'Terminator,' I was a cyborg with feelings; in 'Avatar,' I lived for 15 months on a fantastical planet, and in 'Clash of the Titans,' I get to fight a scorpion the size of a dump truck. It's a bizarre job, but you explore yourself.

In an era of global value chains, worldwide sourcing and the never-ending search for new markets, we must be careful to avoid the proliferation of regional standards. A multilateral approach holds wider benefits for more actors.

I suppose there are actors who are worried about their public image. But I've never had any trouble playing unpleasant characters. It is only a part. Which is why you do it -because you are interested in exploring something you never could or would be.

I think that for the actors, the last thing that they want is a director that's not watching, a director that goes 'Okay, it sounded good to me,' and they were doing something else or preoccupied with something else because they were worried about the light changing.

People like to think that actors are terribly worried about ghosts of other actors in the parts they play. But you just have to get on with it.

You just worry that your time is up. It's not that people suddenly go, 'Oh, actually they're not very good any more,' but sometimes, well, your time is up. There are a lot of actors out there who just disappear.