Michael Haneke Quotes

As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.

I think the best directors provide you with a safe environment where they can instill you with confidence and allow you to try things out and not feel like you're failing or that you're doing it wrong.

It's always great when a director is just supportive of what you're doing. They're not so much critiquing you but giving you more ideas, giving you tons of things to work with, making you question your character and making you think about it... and making it seem like everything is limitless. That usually helps a lot.

A director like Ram Gopal Varma brings out a different dimension in your performance.

I try to cast really good actors and give them a chance to do their very best work, give them as much time and space as they need.

It rarely happens that I get to work again with the same director. I had such a wonderful time on Antichrist with Lars von Trier, that I was going to do whatever he proposed me to do. When he sent me the script of Christmas, I just loved it. I think I love anything he writes.

I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of directors who understand that actors need to feel empowered in order to really do their job.

Personally, as an artiste, I never do any discrimination. If I am offered a 'Golmaal 4,' I'll run and do it.

My whole thing is, you listen to the actor and help them bring out their best thing.

When you have the chance to work with Wes Anderson, with Stephen Frears and Chris Weitz and Roman Polanski and Terrance Malick you don't say no.

The concept of making a movie in which the director dictates is kind of exotic - and absolutely not truthful. Directing means allowing a great deal of collaboration and listening and having the ability to change your mind.

Working with Sukumar was amazing. He's someone who trusts his actors and allows them to experiment with dialogues and scenes. When you're working with him, you learn a lot subconsciously, and that helped me in discovering the actor within.

When I find those actors who are going to work that hard and collaborate that deeply, my role is to make sure there's a whole lot there for them to work with.

Working with a great director is wonderful for an actor because it means that you're not forced to take the advice of an idiot.

John Doyle just knows how to feed actors, and what comes out of us, good, bad, right, wrong, doesn't matter. There's no fear or censure. He opens up the creative goo and all of the actor vessel stuff. He knows how to do it. It's just incredible.

You need someone who has a really good way of enabling trust in the cast and crew, or the cast particularly, to allow them the confidence to stretch themselves to get the performance that you're going to need to provide all of the emotional up and downs in the film.

For me, a director is such an important part of thE process. I really have to trust him. Because then you can kind of let your inhibitions down. You can go anywhere when you trust someone.

No one's going to see my mistakes; I just need the safety of these mistakes to lead me to the right answers.

I’m an actor who’s accustomed to bringing a lot of stuff to the table, and you have to be ready because some of them will be accepted and some of them will be rejected. Then you need a generous, free, fearless, loving director like Tarantino to allow you to take those risks.

It would get really alienating, to have my face be the face of a cause. So much just comes down to the songs. I just want to give us the opportunity to write great songs. Even our work in Haiti is limited by how good our songs are. We just need to get rid of as much of the bullshit as possible, so we can have a life, so we have something to write about.

I get so much energy and I learn so much through collaborating with other people. Ultimately, I think the best music will always be created through collaborations - pooling together skills to create something bigger than any individual. I like to use my own SOPHIE material to present ideas in their most extreme, un-compromised form. I really use those opportunities to express exactly where I'm at in terms of production and writing ideas, as a document of my thoughts and feelings, as well.

You can't be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get 'blocked' make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.

Make no mistake, the organizations website counsels. You will be writing a lot of crap. And thats a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. I am not the first person to point out that writing a lot of crap doesnt sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November.

I don't see myself as a movie maker only. When I can do a picture, I do. But I don't work like a business, in pictures. I am not obliged to make one picture after the other in order to live. I write books, I write for comic books, I give lectures... I live. And when the opportunity comes to do a picture, I do a picture.

I think a lot of directors nowadays come from the commercial world, which is about seduction, which has nothing to do with personal directing. If you are trying to seduce an actor he might like it but I can guarantee you that he'll hate it when you start shooting. They are looking for somebody who is like a compadre, their brother, or sister, who can tell them the honest truth and help them to become a better artist than they are right then.