Robert De Niro Quotes

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.

When you get confidence from your director, as an actor, it is all a matter of how your director says, 'This is how much I can get out of you.'

As a director you come in and tell the actors how good they are.

I always had to genuinely like the actors I worked with and use my enthusiasm and vision to give them confidence to push their creativity and their humor.

You hear stories about directors using manipulation to get actors to do certain things, but I think when you're working with professional actors, it's all about trust. They can do anything you want, it's just a matter of them understanding what you're looking for, and the reason why.

Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence.

Good actors are a dime a dozen, but I want actors that are gonna be part of my team and collaborative.

Actors know, with me they aren't going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

I wouldn't ask any of my employees to do anything I wouldn't do. And I work as hard, if not harder than the rest of the staff, to set an example. I also believe in giving my employees a lot of room to be creative and to express themselves.

It's not easy to act, but to direct to act. It goes form one place to the next. It's not heading for the punchline, and also it's not about scoring goals. It's about passing the ball, and the goals will come by themselves.

Part of the process of acting in a film that you're also directing is really trusting the people around you to capture your vision, which hopefully you have communicated well to them.

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.

Good acting is about being as natural and calm as possible. These days producers have such definite ideas that you have to be prepared to do whatever they ask.

There's no way a director can communicate with every single person on the set and yet they need to motivate and instill an ambition to want to do their best work.

Mr. Balanchine was a great gentleman, and he loved his dancers. He was devoted to his company. He came to the ballet every night, and his presence was felt. It was like the whole company was dancing for him. And if he liked you, he trusted you to be yourself. He didn't try to change you and make you into something you were not.

As a leader, these attributes - confidence, perseverance, work ethic and good sense - are all things I look for in people. I also try to lead by example and create an environment where good questions and good ideas can come from anyone.

I direct with energy. I believe in energy. I think energy is an electric thing in actors. I try to inspire, encourage, and make choices with lots of energy. And truth. I'm big fan of truth and being funny. I like leading 50 people into battle every day.

I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal.

Acting for me is like a ping-pong game. That's the secret of acting. When you have a really good actor, I always want to be as good as he is or she is.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results.

A director just pushes them a little this way or that way.

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.

I never try to show an actor what to do or what to say. He has to find out for himself. The role of the director is to guide him to that state, and then to implement it.

Actors want to act. I think a lot of times what happens is that they're expected to bring it all. Probably because I'm a writer, I'm not telling them what to do. I just provide them with as much as I can.

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.