Kurt Sutter Quotes

I love to choose the right actors. It's kind of a pleasure to work with them and watch them imbue your concepts that you write.

I do think that's so much a part of what being a director is - in working with actors - to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.

You cannot sit at home at act. You need a story, a director, you need people to believe in you, to put you through that journey. It is not something you can attain within yourself.

My whole thing is, you listen to the actor and help them bring out their best thing.

I wrote 'Aadukalam' keeping Dhanush in mind. As an actor, he delivers exactly what I need and sometimes more.

I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.

As an actor, I love working with directors. As much as I love working with other actors.

I have only one rule in acting - trust the director and give him heart and soul.

I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing.

I'm not a huge kind of visual director. For me, it's all about the acting. There's no greater buzz than working with actors and seeing what they can do and how much they can improve on what you'd written. That will always be on the top of my list. It's a real privilege to see it live before anyone else sees it.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable.

As a director, it became important to hear that specific role read by that specific actor, and you hear the chemistry, or you don't hear the chemistry. So I'm not so bothered by the audition process anymore; in fact, I use it. It's a time for the actor to actually get to the know the director and the producers a little bit, too.

I choose my actors well and get to know the quirks of their personalities - and, most of all, I share humor with them. Then I keep my eyes open when they rehearse and perform, because you never know where the next stimulation comes from.

My experience has been that actors always want to be directed.

Established actors will challenge you if they don't agree with the way you are taking it, and you have to argue it. But with a younger cast, they are more likely to wonder whether what they are doing is okay instead of trying to second guess the director. That helps push you.

I keep saying this, but the most important part of directing is casting, and the rest of it is pretty easy.

Most actors go, 'I read the script and fell in love with it'; I fall in love with the directors.

I think every actor would probably say that it's always a collaboration. And if you ask directors, they'll tell you that they expect the actors to bring something. They don't want to be thinking for everybody.

I'm such a carnivorous researcher as an actor - I chew it up like it's meat, and I really don't know how to do that without the people that are producing or creating or writing that which they want me to chew up.

As an actor, I love the feeling of being on set and the camaraderie of working on something together.

Sometimes, as an actor - and I've witnessed this with other actors that I've worked with - you don't realize that it's not all about the actor.

I've spent most of my life trying to make actors comfortable, which I think is 90 percent of getting a good performance.

As a director, you see something in someone; you know it's there, you just got to go get it. You do that with any actor. That's your job.

I think one of the biggest jobs of being a director is getting the casting right.