Jaime Murray Quotes

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.

As a filmmaker I find it much more rewarding to work with actors who are classically trained. It's about the work and only the work.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it, I can't do it.

Sometimes a scene works and acting is the easiest thing in the world and you don't have to do much of anything - just enjoy yourself and listen to the other actor. When it doesn't work, then every actor has different ways of dealing with the impasse. Sometimes you use memories from the past. Whatever. It depends from job to job.

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.

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

I approach directing from an actor's standpoint.

Directing remains very psychological, and it takes a lot of time and reflection. When you're an actor, it takes less time, and you can express yourself physically.

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

I love working with actors, and it's all been based on my being trained in the theater.

Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It's always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn't expect.

I don't worry too much about learning lines per se. The memorization is the easy part for me, usually. For me, it's more about working on the context, back story, intention, motivation, etc. Once that's in place, the lines come pretty naturally.

If you're working opposite an actor who can act, then all you have to do is listen and respond.

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 actors, we often look for the scene, big moments that say, 'This is why you have to do this role.'

Each actor, every single time you work with an actor, you have to come up with the language that's going to serve them. And that's what allows them to give the performance that you want to nurture inside of them and what you think they're capable of giving.

My favorite kind of acting scenes, or at least where I think people shine the brightest, are odes to Meisner technique scenes where people are face-to-face, and it's almost like a repetition exercise.

It's strange not to allow the actor some input and breathing room into what was written on the page - it is their job to make it come alive.

Jeff Bridges taught me a lot about how to keep a scene fresh.

It's always a mystery when you're going into a role - 'Here's your wife of 40 years and... action!' How do you create ease or chemistry or whatever is supposed to exist?

I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character.

I love doing theater so much - being in front of an audience and seeing how a character grows and develops with every performance.