Luca Guadagnino Quotes

One of the things I love about directing is I love actors, because no matter how complex they are, once you get down to working and talking to them and the toughest guy will want you to open them up and he wants to show you stuff he was afraid to show anybody before.

I want to be in a more natural state while doing acting.

I think working with actors is a little bit how a chef would work with a potato or a piece of meat. You have to kind of have a look at the potato or the piece of meat and see what kind of possibilities are in the ingredient. I know I'm using the wrong metaphor. I think my job is to see what potato is there and from there, just work under their conditions.

If you can walk into a set and feel the reality of it, then immediately you're not having to work to bring yourself into the character.

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.

I know what actors fear, what they like; I know how to get things out of them and I listen to them better, since I've been there.

I've always been interested in character-driven pieces, and my approach to directing is through acting.

With films, you completely immerse yourself in a character, get into who they are, live it and then release it.

The actor already comes with emotions to the scene: fear, the fear of being in front of the camera. It is this fear that spurs the emotion of the scene. I too am afraid; I don't know exactly what I am searching for. On the set, we are all participating in this fear together.

As an actor, you're naked emotionally; you're revealing yourself emotionally.

Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.

Acting is also working with people who invite you into their dreams and trust you with their innermost being.

The sexy moments for me, I wasn't thinking of them as sexy. I was thinking of them as more specific to my character. So it was necessary for my character's development in the movie, so that's how I played it.

I try to allow the spirit of the character to live through me. That's the only way I know how to approach acting. I have to live it.

Mostly I work really unconsciously, and I think if the scenes are really well written, which they are, and if I just throw myself into it, I don't really think about it.

With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.

To start, I wasn't really interested in acting at all, and I didn't make much impact. The first play I was in was on for five nights and I didn't show up for two of them and nobody noticed. But I stayed because that's where my friends were, and after a while I found myself wanting to inhabit other people's worlds and lives.

When you're supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you're talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you're filming.

Acting is all about finding the truth within whatever world you're in.

Oliver Stone's strategy is to unnerve the actors so as to make them alert and alive.

'Boardwalk' has kind of exposed me to a different demographic. And it upped my skills in terms of the speed with which I can prep a scene, and I'm excited to apply that.

In terms of jumping into a character's skin, I try to immerse myself in the role as much as possible to bring me closer to them. All I do is what's required to achieve what I want to achieve.

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.