Michael Spiller Quotes

I want to do more theater, which allows you to take bigger risks and experiment.

To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play.

I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.'

It's the most amazing cast, a dream cast. We laugh all the time.

When I do the roles, when I'm in the room and auditioning, I'll ask the director if they're cool with me adding stuff, or just improvising while we're doing it. And I would say, like, 90 percent of the time, they say, 'Absolutely.'

I want to keep a thread between the studio and the stage, and I want to flow more easily from one to the other.

In comedy it helps if there's a friendly atmosphere on the set.

Actors always have opinions.

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take.

I've worked with actors who were very helpful and a lot better than I was.

I think the best directors provide you with a safe environment where they can instill you with confidence and allow you to try things out and not feel like you're failing or that you're doing it wrong.

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.

On the stage, you alone hold the key, and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.

You can't plan everything - if I did a performance exactly how I rehearsed it, it would be so boring.

Where I teach students in drama school, there's a course called Dramatics. In this course, all students must put on a play. However, acting majors are not supposed to act. They can write the play, for example, and the writers may work on stage art. Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show.

I can't wait to do a fully improvised script again, to find people who are really comfortable and into it. It's about the capabilities of the people you're working with, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the most brilliant actors need the spine of the text to work off of, and there's no shame in that; they're actors, not writers.

We have a great time on that show, and we enjoy one another's company on stage and off. And sitcoms don't have bad schedules. We started out working five days a week, but now we're down to three.

You know. I'll try anything. I'll do anything. I'll explore. Try different takes. All that kind of stuff to do sometimes, to do good performances, but always conducive to having a good time creatively.

I'm an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain... The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot.

The whole idea with acting is that you take some risks. And if you take some risks, you're really going to mess up sometimes. But it's not OK to mess up a movie; it's not OK to do that just so you can improve as an actor. But film-making takes a little bit of risk in every department.

That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further.

I don't like going for more than a year without doing theatre. I don't mind falling flat on my face so long as I feel I'm open to the possibility of something extraordinary happening.

When I'm making records, I like it to be quite fast. Don't let the band learn it too well.

I think it's important to create an atmosphere where actors feel like they can try things out. It doesn't mean that I'll take every suggestion, but I want there to be some room for actors to grow.

If you are doing stand-up comedy, you have to be confident in what you are doing. That doesn't mean just because you are confident you are funny.