Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. -Frank Zappa, composer, musician, film director (1940-1993)
To be honest, the real reason I did 'Drive' was because of Nicolas Winding Refn, the director.
Indeed, the actor's lot is a much harder one than that of the director's, from one simple standpoint: The actor has to play the eight shows a week.
I learned so much about being an actor by being a director. More than I ever thought I would.
I believe that as a writer and a director, you're only providing the skeleton of a character, and you're hiring actors to fill it out.
In the past I've worked with directors who saw very much their scene in their head and knew exactly how they were going to cut it.
Theater is a lot more interactive, more of a cohesive unit. With television, it can be a different director every episode.
For many years, my favorite director has been the Japanese giant Akira Kurosawa.
A lot of what I think I do as a director is try to give everything over to the actor. So I disappear.
Theater is very much the world I'd like to get back to, particularly in New York, both as an actor and director.
The way I see it, when I go out as an actor, it should be on a type of film I'm never going to do as a director.
I like directors who come on the set and create something that's a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.
It was my band. I organized the band and Dizzy was in the band. Dizzy was the first musical director with the band. Charlie Parker was in the band. But, no, no, that was my band.
I was on the state board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union.
... the director explained to him, in that slow, simplified, style of language that one uses for the intellectually underprivileged,
I don't like people who use the press to advance themselves in a way that they haven't earned as an actor, performer or director.
I've worked with Steven Spielberg three times. I'm proud to say that I'm one of those actors that continues to get hired by the same directors.
Whereas with Sirk, everything is always filmed. No matter what the script, he's always a real director.
One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.
I think a first-time director always has to convince a lot of people that they're ready to do it.
I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.
