Tony Scott Quotes

Well, first of all, making films is a collaborative process. You need people. You need people you trust and love and who are your friends. People you can work with.

So many people have said this, but it's true: 95 percent of what I do as a director is casting and getting people who can bear the load of what you're asking them to do and creating this emotionally safe environment.

I quite like it when you're working with people and you only get to know them through the scenes that you're doing together.

Filmmaking is such a collaboration. At a certain point, I suppose you do have to let go and trust the people you're working with.

It was a pleasure to have somebody else be the boss. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun any other way. He's been around and made a lot of movies and he's a great straightforward person to work for. And it was a pleasure to see other people to pick up characters that you've sketched out loosely on paper and make them into something fascinating.

When I work, I'm the actor. I'm going to do my job. I'm not going to direct the movie. If I wanted to direct it, I would direct it. I wanted J.J. Abrams to direct Mission: Impossible. I work with people that I respect. I expect them to do their jobs, and I will do mine. And I am there as a producer to help in any way, but no one makes a movie by themselves. It's a collaboration.

You make a movie and it's like convincing people to go on an expedition with you. You think you know where it's going to end up, and you're hoping and guessing. But, when people trust you and get involved, based on that trust, it's a really nice feeling to be able to have everything pay off.

I'm really lucky because I surround myself onset with people who I really trust to give me feedback, so I'm directing myself.

We would choreograph [ with Paul Dano] before each scene [in Swiss Army Man] and very quickly got to a place where we could improvise physically in scene and know that the other person would respond in character appropriately. So that [dynamic] was a lot of fun.

One of those things that I like about TV is that if you get a group of people you like, you can work with these people for months at a time, and you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use those in the direction where you take the characters.

Every time you say yes to a film there's a certain percentage of your yes that has to do with the director, a certain percentage to do with the story, a certain percentage with the character, the location, etc.

I see my actors as my collaborators.

Making movies is both entirely ludicrous and incredibly hard. It's a preposterous way to spend your time. You give up a lot for the privilege of doing it, and one of the things you get are relationships of immense trust that you see forged in situations of immense stress.

You have to understand that when you're a voice actor on an animated film, you're really just a tiny little piece of this huge process. And when you finally get to see the finished product and see all of the wonderful work that the animators & the designers & the writers did to make your character stand out, it's just so touching, so humbling.

I think, you know, actors rely on each other all the time.

I love the process of working with a filmmaker and the writers and the actors.

What I've learned in my career as an actor is that you're only as good as your collaborators. The process is many things, but it is wholly collaborative, particularly with something like 'Westworld,' which is a 10-episode-per-season gig, and we're just now on the 7th episode.

I never argue with any director. When they say something will click, I believe them.

Every film is a human encounter. It's people trying to collaborate and create something together.

When you're working with an actor who's prepared and brings it when you need it, it's just a very validating creative experience.

When I cast someone in a movie, I have to absolutely trust who they are as a human being. Trust is the intangible of moviemaking.

When you're working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they're pushing it. The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want. Familiarity breeds contempt, people say. But I've found, for creative things, familiarity breeds peace of mind, because you realize you know someone better. You trust each other. You know not to take things a certain way, or a wrong way. You get to where you don't have to waste quite so much time with diplomacy. Things are a little more efficient.

Any film is a collaborative process, you've got thousands and thousands of people working on it.

The most important part of filmmaking is the collaboration and the ensemble element of it. If you just all focus on the task and the work and try and make the best film that you can then people will come.

Ninety percent of my roles, I've had to fight for. It's only a really small percentage of people who get handed roles. But that can be quite scary. The good thing about auditioning is that you get to test yourself and see if you can play this character - you're also auditioning yourself. I enjoy seeing what the chemistry is between the people you might be working with.