You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do to get the most out of everyone's potential. Part of it is just making sure we all have the same vision.
There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.
I went to a very mean school and was bullied like crazy. I was a bit of a goth with purple hair, and I was also part of the drama group, which was filled with actors and writers and wasn't really accepted by the rest of the school.
Working with Jon Hamm was super-fun because he's a brilliant actor and he's very kind. I would hang around sets for scenes that I wasn't even in because I wanted to watch how he worked.
I've seen what can happen to an actor when he's just working for the sake of working. All of a sudden it's ten years later, your career's happened, and you haven't had any control.
Unfortunately, when you're an actor you have to act. It's not like you can sit in your living room, your bedroom, your study or whatever and act with yourself. It requires having somebody to respond to.
All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.
If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.
As an actor, you're trained to do the right thing, be politically correct, say your lines, say the right thing about the people you're working with.
I can't take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I'll have to leave those other battles to somebody else.
The one thing you can ask, I think, is that actors get paid a living wage. I would like it if all the repertory theatres that currently exist could do that. It would make a huge difference.
It's a question of finding the right thing, if I'm going to be an actor... if I have to get up eight times a week for a number of months, I want to be excited and challenged from the day I start to the day I leave.
I've never been difficult to anybody or with anybody on a picture. Especially when you're in that nice status of hierarchy of actors and actresses who get to approve directors. Because once you make that choice, it's my belief that the director's bos...
I don't know where actors go after they die, but I know people who help other people have a nice place to go. And I would like to go there if I can.
Acting is a win-win situation. There is no risk involved. That's why I get tired of hearing actors who try to make out that there's a downside to it. Fame is an odd thing. It bugs you a little bit, but it's really not bad.
Well, I think any actor can probably identify with being a professional liar. You don't always look at yourself that way, but I know a lot of days I do.
I'll betide thee, say I, and may the Gods, or at least the Athenians, confound thee for a vile citizen and a vile third-rate actor! Read the evidence.
There is only so much you can do if you're pulling weight and there's nobody there to play off of. You can't have those beautiful moments with new actors who are so worried about everything else but the moment.
Since it was too difficult to get into the Screen Actor's Guild in New York, I moved to Miami in 1982 and started a successful career as a television commercial actress, obtaining my SAG card there.
I think Chicago people are very special people, and the Midwest's confluence of East Coast-meets-Midwest sensibilities had to, on a formative level, inform me as an artist and an actor. In that sense, it had to have helped me.
I must say, I am a 10,000-times better director because I am in therapy. I'm serious. I can understand more the actors. I can manipulate them more easily.
