Robert De Niro Quotes

Minimal is the word I'd use to describe how I live and dress, and it's also how I sing. I'm not a big fan of overemoting.

Everybody thinks performance capture is about thrashing around and doing a lots of movement, but it's actually about being able to contain and think and be believed in a close-up, as much as anything else.

For me, acting is doing.

With young people, it's how brassy and flashy can you be. But you get a bit older, it's about how restrained can you be. You have to feel it all, think it all, but you don't have to play it - it's just gotta be there, and if the story's good and the script's good, people will see it.

If directors, actors and writers have the ability to drop their alpha-male egos, you will always get better work. In terms of my own demands, I actually want fewer lines. If I can lose a line and do it with my face, I'd rather do that.

Hopefully, any character I play has an anchor in reality.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.

I tend to play more true-to-life characters in real situations.

I always want to bring emotion across in a straightforward way. I don't want to get histrionic when I'm singing. For me that's just not interesting; it goes too far down one road.

Working on 'Honeymoon,' an independent movie, was almost like working on TV with the space, and everything was stripped down - costume and hair and makeup. There was very little to hide behind, and you absolutely had to create the character from within.

I just like to keep things small and subtle and authentic, and ground everything in reality. So that is something that I feel is my strength as a director and I try to achieve as an actor.

'English Vinglish' is simple; that's why people like it. The film has simplicity and sensitivity. There is no melodrama. Some things have been conveyed just through expressions and no lines.

Sometimes there is simply no need to be either clever or original.

It's my job to try to communicate with as little showiness as possible. I was a really showy actor as a young man.

Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.

We should work for simple, good, undecorated things.

I play a lot of characters where I don't even speak in my own voice. I learned about focus and I learned to trust that things can work when they're not heightened and that it's interesting when things are pared down.

The Truth never flaunted a sign.

She would not have put herself out so much to say so little.

You got to constantly be in character.

I feel there’s no need to overstate.

One can do such lovely things with so little. Subjects that are too beautiful end by appearing theatrical.

When people embrace character, it informs their living, breathing moments in a scene so well.

The essence of Bonham is what he didn't play rather than what he did play - what he left out.