Sergio Leone Quotes

Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. And I beg them not to imitate me, because I'm not a good actor.

I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director.

I generally won't do a role unless I feel like it's in my system somewhere, even if it's just a molecule of it. Like I just felt like I knew it and if I talked about it or discussed it or tried to rehearse it that it would take away the energy from that scene so I went in there and just did it.

The actors make the film. They're the ones that take this theoretical movie that's in your head and make it real. The success of a film is entirely on their shoulders. I admire them, because acting is such a difficult thing to do, and I personally can't understand it.

[As an actor] I have ideas, but things should always be fluid. You should always be ready to follow an instinct. Something might reveal itself on the day.

The visual stuff just lives inside of you. As far as really being able to take care of an actor on a set, how to talk to an actor, and how to get what you need out of a scene is probably where I might know a thing or two. Although, in TV, the actors are pretty much left alone. It's really the writer's medium more than anything.

As an actor, I feel like I'm somebody who, when somebody gives me a mark, I don't want to hit it. I don't like that. But then, without even knowing it, I just hit it.

Sometimes I'll read things in the script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that role and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. My initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.

You work with each individual actor as you perceive their needs to be. It's something that you've figured out in the weeks of pre-production.

In a way, a lot of my work is in the re-writing once it is cast, as I adapt to the rhythms of how the roles are played out by the actors.

In some way, the relationship between a director and an actor is personal.

Each actor is a very different person, and each one has to be directed very differently.

Nothing is worse for me, as an actor, than when I walk on a set and the director goes, "Okay, you're going to be standing here, the other person is going to be standing here, and you're going to move to there and then do the scene." That doesn't help actors.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

I'm very director oriented.

You'll never see any two good actors approach a role in the same way.

As an actor - like an artist - you have to ask, "Why do I choose a certain moment to play something a certain way?" It's organic to who we are.

There's always an intellectual side to the films Ang Lee's doing and to the characters, and there's such a deep knowledge when you've worked with the actors that he's worked with, on stage in particular, but also in film.

When it's a minor or supporting role, you learn to make the most of what you're given. I can make two lines seem like Hamlet.

I had to learn how to modulate my performances and interpretations of these roles in auditions for the camera.

Directing was a transformative experience for me, one that I really enjoyed.

The biggest compliment I think an actor can get is I can't imagine anyone else in the role.

Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality - it resists and makes demands.

Working with any actor is like working with a monkey.

I think you have to be flexible above all as an actor; different characters have different demands, actors that you work with are different in their approach, or how you get along or don't get along with them.