Back then, it was more or less we couldn't change a line in our script. We weren't allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won't do parts. It's very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more ...
I think there's a quality of passion to the American actor. I'm certainly attracted to it, and I like to hope that underscoring it is a characteristic of my work. That quality is certainly also present in some British actors, but I tend to feel the m...
If you will remember history correctly, even the Second World War was perpetrated by a stateless actor, by murdering the Prince Rudolf, if you remember. And so is the case with 9/11. It was a stateless actor which has made the world go to war.
I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be fr...
I trained as a singer before I was an actor. I was a kid singer, I went to theater and choir school, and then I got music scholarships throughout my education. And that's what I was going to do. And then I took a left turn and went to drama school an...
See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.
'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.
Mel is a great director because he's not just a director, he's an actor, so he knows how to direct actors. I loved working with him. He's great as a director. He's so intelligent. He's generous. I really loved him.
I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.
There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work.
My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.
I've learned 90 percent of what I know from watching and listening to actors. A good leading actor is the rock of the show. Their energy and their tone really sets the groundwork for how everything is going to work. I've been lucky to deal with stars...
There are three things that are important for a film. Number one is story, number two is story, number three is story. Good actors can save a bad script and make it bearable, but good actors can't make a bad script good - they can just make it bearab...
I find performing very difficult. It's difficult to be a good actor. I get very nervous, even though it sounds disingenuous, because you could legitimately go, 'Well, why do it?'
I don't think Indian actors are good. A couple of them are, like Anupam Kher, but not many are there like him in the industry. There are thousand of actors and actresses in the industry, but you can count on hand how many of them are really good; the...
For some time, I thought being a producer would be a more fulfilling career than being an actor. But then I went to a conference in Cannes with 300 other producers, all desperately chasing finance for their projects... and realized being an actor was...
As an actor, you've worked very hard, and you've been doing this for 20-some years, and William Morris was never interested - or any studio, either - in your company or as an actor, and then 'God's Not Dead' happens, and now everyone calls you.
In order to be an actor you really have to be one of those types of people who are risk-takers and have what is considered an actor's arrogance, which is not to say an arrogance in your personal life. But you have to be the type of person who wants t...
I always say that life is not easy for anybody. People hear about the young actors who have a rough life, but there are plenty of other kids who aren't actors who have a rough time, too, and I don't know if the ratio is any different.
When I started writing after my career as an actor, I knew that that other life in the film industry would be pulled into my writing life and that people would see me not as an author but as an actor starting to write.
I don't particularly consider myself an actor. I have no training. I love doing it, but I would never consider myself to be a colleague of an actual actor. That would be stepping way up in class on my part.
