Bill Hader Quotes

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 had noticed very vividly that very few directors know how to direct actors because they haven't done it.

I don't know what directing actors is all about apart from just casting well and then shaping their performances a bit, you know.

After all these years, I'm starting to learn what a good director does, and I know what a good one does with actors: help us navigate finer instincts, help us when we're wrong, encourage us when things are great.

As a director, you have to know what actors are doing. You're the one telling them what to do. The actors' job is to come prepared to the set, but sometimes, if they're beginning actors or people who are non-actors, you have to teach them how to act.

I can speak to actors in their terms. Knowing I was an actor, they relax. You can have the best shot in the world - but, at the center of it, you still need a good performance.

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.

I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else.

I didn't train in directing; I talk to actors the way I talk to anybody.

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.

A lot of directors straight out of film school are very technically minded, but they don't have an understanding of actors or how to talk to them.

I think actors do need some hand holding to know what they are doing.

For me, all you want from your actor is for them to engage on a deeply emotional level with the material. If you feel like that happens, directing the actors is pretty much done at that point.

I know with Gary Ross especially, he kind of gave me pointers here and there, but he kind of let me become firm in any way that I needed, and he just let me try things and to explore what I can do with my acting. So that was very helpful.

I guess once you've been acting for a long time, you glean the great bits of good directors and the bad bits from other directors, and you know the way that you would like to be directed.

Working with a great actor is really educational.

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

On 'Glee,' the director can be like, 'Hey, your face is looking a little too intense here.' And they can show me the screen, and I can be like, 'I know exactly what to do here.'

The best way to learn how to work with actors is to have had experience of trying to act yourself - it will teach you humility if nothing else.

I try to get the best performance an actor can give.

Actors are accustomed to doing exactly what the director or writer requests us to do, and rarely get involved in that part of the process.

I direct as an actor. Many times, I will say, 'Let me try this.' And I'll walk the scene through and see what I can tell the actor about it. I don't know what to tell him until I've actually tried it and seen what the problem is.

A director must push his actors to the utmost limit to get everything possible out of each scene - without being corny or sentimental or going overboard.