Steven Soderbergh Quotes

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.

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

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

Good directors give short and specific instructions to their actors.

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 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.

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

Sometimes you can just have a dialogue with an actor beforehand and shape the performance then, but other actors need more guidance on the set.

You need to become a good listener. As you're working, you hear someone else's lines and how you absorb them becomes your acting.

Everyone brings their own particular skill set to the job, and acting training can work for a lot of actors, and it can't. I've seen a lot of really good actors go into acting schools and then come out a little bit corrupted.

Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.

My ambition is to get better as an actor.

I don't think actors get good training today. I put my training to use in everything I do.

Some actors like encouragement. Some actors prefer to have pressure. And sometimes, for some actors, its better to give your comment by silence, because they are so skillful, so gifted, that they understand without talking too much.

There's an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what's there.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

The majority of directors I've worked with didn't know how to talk to actors.

Acting lessons teach you to really listen to what the other person is saying because in acting it's all about responding to the lines.

I was a director and dialogue and acting coach.

I want to challenge myself as an actor.

Actors always feel more comfortable when there's an actor directing, in terms of vocabulary and breaking down a scene.

My strength is with actors. I think I'm good at working with them to get the best performances, at seeing what it is that they have and that the story needs.

As an actor, it is my job to prepare for the role I am playing.

There is always a producer within an actor. You just wait for the right time to start functioning as one.

I'm a technician whose efforts go into hiding my limitations as an actor.