I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.
The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.
I consider myself a martial artist and an actor. They can work together or individually. I love to do action. I love having a good role in which I can act and fight. That's double happiness.
I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.
You just have to know what your responsibility is to the movie, and live up to that, and be considerate of the other actors in the scene... I have never been competitive in that way - I always want my leading ladies to be as good as they possibly can...
A fantastic actor in a scene that's just closed off will be good. But when working with a director who knows little tricks - correct music, slowly pushing in - that stunning performance will somehow become even better. I've always seen it as a symbio...
Still, on 'Friends', we had some guest-stars who were less than spectacular, not the stunt-casting, but just regular guest-stars, and they weren't particularly great actors, but the material was so good that they scored. It's the writing.
When you've got good actors, they're going to come up with good stuff, but you're never quite sure how the dynamics are going to work between them.
He's very alive in a scene. He's a very good actor to act with. Even though through most of the picture he's blind, there are many places early in the picture I got to be with him before he was blind. Like convincing him in the office to do the pictu...
Films were never in my budget. Didn't occur to me till much later. I hoped for a long, good life, which I've had and I'm having as an actor. I didn't expect the rest.
I'm one of those fortunate actors who gets to work pretty much every day. I've had a run of good fortune and work with some terrific people who have hired me.
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.
If I know a guy who's a really good improvisational actor, I'd be foolish not to let him because he'll come up with goodies and all kinds of little freebies that you get.
It's never going to get better than working opposite an actor like Jeff Bridges. That's as good as it gets. I don't even know what to refer to him as. He's just a great guy. He's iconic on his own merits.
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 h...
Every other movie is one of those action things. I mean, 'Lost in Space'? A bunch of good actors running around shooting at special effects on a soundstage? I took my kids to see that and felt like I was on an acid trip.
I want to keep doing different things. I'd like to do a more personal, dramatic movie next, I think. But as long as it's about characters and good writing and good parts for actors, that's what's important.
The prosthetics were interesting because the artist was so good that they could just put a Hitchcock mask on me, but you don't want to do that. You're an actor playing Hitchcock, so it's about how much of that you're going to do.
There are things that I would avoid, so I have the choice to say no, when I feel I'm repeating myself too much. But then there could be a reason to do that with a good director. So I think actors have to have a loose philosophy.
I've been lucky to learn by playing all kinds of roles and watching all kinds of really good cinematographers, actors, and directors for many years before people were even aware of me in terms of audience.
I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I've read as an actor, and I'm a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the s...
