A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. — Kevin Bacon
A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. — Natasha Richardson
Communication is the key, and it's one thing I had to learn-to talk to the actors. I was so involved with the visual and technical aspects that I would forget about the actors. — Steve Buscemi
Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed. — Elia Kazan
It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head. — Tom Selleck
An actor really suffers when the director isn't prepared because you start running out of time for the shoot and then have to do it fast. — Carol Kane
You need someone to tell you how to do things like hitting your marks, or driving a car so it looks right or getting out of a car so it doesn't take a million years of screen time. — Gary Cole
The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. — John Huston
Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes. — John Ford
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.' — Alfred Hitchcock
Acting in a scene is like paddling a canoe from a pebbly beach on to the river, the writer builds the canoe, and the actor provides the river. The river is the actor's thoughts and emotions. — Sanford Meisner
The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it. — Christopher Nolan
I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston
Work for the actor lies essentially in two areas: the ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express that reality. — Lee Strasberg
Short Actors Quotes
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. — Sanford Meisner
Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it. — Constantin Stanislavski
You'll never see any two good actors approach a role in the same way. — Constantin Stanislavski
I want to be one of the biggest social media stars ever to become an actor. — Jake Paul
We're improv comedians, we're not necessarily actors, we don't come across that way. — Joe Gatto
As a guiding principle, life shrinks and life expands in direct proportion to your willingness to assume risk. — Casey Neistat
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined... — Henry David Thoreau
When you can’t change the direction of the wind — adjust your sails — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination. — Carl Rogers
When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there. — Zig Ziglar
If you think down, you will go down. If you think up, you will go up. You’ll always travel in the direction of your thinking. — T. D. Jakes
The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction. — Maria Montessori
I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that. — Julie Taymor
I'd love to direct a film, but I don't think I have the temperament for it. I'm very hyper, and I want things to be done ASAP. If I turn director, I might end up killing my actors. — Shilpa Shetty
I think the success of a film is very important to an actor. It depends on how many people go to watch your movies; the more the merrier. Nobody wants to do a film for five people. You work so hard that millions of people watch the movie; this is directly related to box office success. — Rani Mukerji
I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen. — Diane Lane
When I started acting, my mom said, "If you want to go to film school and eventually direct, being on set is probably the best film school in the world." I'm incredibly grateful for the career I've had, but I was an actor to be a part of movies and TV, not the other way around. — Jay Baruchel
I stopped doing that [photojournalism] and wrote some screenplays on speculation, because even though I wanted to direct, to direct you need a lot of money. Even for a cheap movie, you need film stock and equipment and actors. — Curtis Hanson
The first film I directed (Explicit Ills), I did when I was like 27 years old. I had been an actor for a certain amount of time, and then I was like, "I want to start directing." — Mark Webber
There is an established tradition of actors directing films that have a particular, personal meaning for them - Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, and most recently George Clooney to name a few. Remarkably, their films share an unusually high percentage of being very good. — Steven Van Zandt
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. — Julie Taymor
Actors And Acting Quotes
The inner life of the [imagination], and not the personal and tiny experiential resources of the actor, should be elaborated on the stage and shown to the audience. This life is rich and revealing for the audience as well as for the actor himself. — Michael Chekhov
An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer. — Marlon Brando
The way I saw it was, if I had the built-in following and the audience, but I also had the skill set of acting, that would shoot me to the top. Because there's so many good actors. There's so many good-looking people. But the X factor now is social media. — Jake Paul
One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces. — Liv Ullmann
Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest. — Kate Winslet
The number one thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence. Writers are thus the pinnacle of intelligence. While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every person out there isn't dating a writer. — Rachel Bloom
I always wanted to be an actor, but with a speech impediment it's kind of tough. I decided to roll the dice and take an acting class, which was very, very nerve-wracking... my stomach would just be in knots. — Nicholas Brendon
I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about. — Kevin Bacon
An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents. — Alec Guinness
I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving. — Kevin Kline
Acting From Actors Quotes
It is highly possible that what is called 'talented behavior' is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a personality can be evoked. — Viola Spolin
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. — Simone Weil
I love learning new things from the other actors. — Sadie Sink
Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia. — Vittorio Gassman
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion. — Kate Reid
The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis. — Marlon Brando
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. — Jack Lemmon
Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society. — Paul Newman
Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience. — Jean-Paul Sartre
I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work. — Meryl Streep
Theatre Acting Quotes
Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you. — Constantin Stanislavski
I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. — Peter Brook
You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done. — Sanford Meisner
An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words. — Sanford Meisner
The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting. — Sanford Meisner
In the theatre we reach out and touch the past through literature, history and memory so that we might receive and relive significant and relevant human qualities in the present and then pass them on to future generations. — Anne Bogart
I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me. — Kate Bosworth
Acting is the art of speaking in a loud, clear voice and the avoidance of bumping into the furniture. — Alfred Lunt
There's nothing more boring than unintelligent actors, because all they have to talk about is themselves and acting. There have to be other things. — Tim Robbins
The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience, there is no theater. Everything done is ultimately for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, fellow players, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful. — Viola Spolin
Casting Directors Quotes
I also get fed up with the fact that casting agents and directors have this impression of me as being frail and petite. I find it very patronizing. I'm quite beefy and strong. I was a gymnast in school and I have lots of muscles. — Helena Bonham Carter
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view. — Steven Spielberg
I randomly went to a casting session in my hometown in North Carolina, and the casting director introduced me to my manager. I really lucked into it! — Maddie Hasson
I often go to lunch meetings with my agent, a gallerist or a casting director, but if not, I stay at home and prepare my own food because I love to cook. Im great at pasta, fish and nice salads. — Jordi Molla
I think a good director casts a film so that the actors bring a lot to the table. — Debbie Allen
You are the director of your own life story. Don't cast idiots or people will walk out during your 2nd act. — Dane Cook
I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game. — Bob Balaban
I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do - monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent. — Randy Harrison
I got an internship with the casting director of The Girl Next Door. I would hold the clipboard and help them in their casting sessions and get them lunch. — Olivia Wilde
Casting directors now just see me as the hard-core sniper or prison guard. — Barry Pepper
Of course, if you have thought up to now that an actor relies merely on inspiration you will have to change your mind. Talent without work is nothing more than raw unfinished material. — Constantin Stanislavski
Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore. — Peter Brook
Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition. — Sanford Meisner
The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. — C. Wright Mills
Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do. — Jerzy Grotowski
The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true. — Hedy Lamarr
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego. — Sir Alec Guinness
I'm living every ten-year-old boy's fantasy. The other day, Chris and I had this big scene where we had to pull out our guns, and I was thinking, 'Here we are in New York City - a place where every actor wants to be - and we are literally playing cops and robbers. How great is that?' — Mariska Hargitay
You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle. — James Cagney
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful. — Satyajit Ray
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego. — Alec Guinness
Get real. You are not the star of the movie. Most of what happens around you isn’t about you at all. There are infinite numbers of other movies. In those, if you feature at all, you’re just a supporting actor. It would really help your happiness if you started to look at your life that way. — Mo Gawdat
The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible. — Tom Cruise
I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me. — Tim McGraw
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them. — Renny Harlin
There's editing, and scripts to read and edit, and casting, and all the elements of production that just sort of take up the normal downtime that you would have as an actor. So there's not a lot of that for me. — Richard Dean Anderson
I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses. — Steven Soderbergh
All these social media sites allow us to confuse truth and popularity. That has to be fixed. Because every normal citizen has a right to know what is factual versus what is amplified by good actors or bad actors. — Chamath Palihapitiya
You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script. — John Taylor Gatto
My childhood was really nice. My parents never forced me to do anything; it was always, "If you want to do that, fine." When I told my father I was going to be an actor, he said, "Fine, but study welding just in case." — Robin Williams
The balcony is a metaphor for a mental and emotional place of perspective, calm, and self-control. If life is a stage and we are all actors on that stage, then the balcony is a place from which we can see the entire play unfolding with greater clarity. To observe ourselves, it is valuable to go to the balcony at all times, and especially before, during, and after any problematic conversation or negotiation. — William Ury
The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind. — Stella Adler
I'm a frustrated actor. My ... goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I'm going to try to break his record. — Stan Lee
There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on. — George Clooney
In Conclusion
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