Tommy Lee Jones Quotes

As soon as I have the script in my hand, I'll be up in my apartment room pacing up and down learning it because it's just such a lovely thing to do.

I never actually do rehearsals. That's one of the reasons that I write those bios and if I can meet with the actors I'll meet them or talk to them on the phone. What I want is for them to come on set knowing their lines and knowing who the character is.

Alexander Payne's very specific. His scripts are always complete when you start working on them.

Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.

I got a lot of energy from directing the film 'Ladies In Lavender.' You wonder if you have the stamina because as an actor you can lounge around the trailer during the scenes you're not in, but as a director, you're there from first thing in the morning to last thing at night every day of the week. I found it incredibly energising.

Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly.

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

The script is always the main preparation for me. Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it, but if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script.

You make a decision whether you just work on the script and believe in every moment and pick out every moment, or if you sit down and memorize lines. Once you really dig into a script, learning lines becomes almost second nature.

Before the film begins shooting, in your head, you need to be the character. You have to convince yourself somehow.

I call it an ensemble cast or the world of 'Gulabo Sitabo' which is about the lifestyle of my characters. I just go and sit there in a corner and observe these characters through my camera. That's how I shot the film.

Colin [Farrell] I talked to several times on the phone, and I said, remember, we have only twenty-five days of doing the movie [Miss Julie], so you must know some of your text. I was a little un-feminist, I didn't want to say [bossy voice] "learn your text!" But when he came, he knew all his text.

I started working on how I would direct this a year before we started shooting "All We Had" and I was prepping, acting, and directing sort of at the same time. I knew that I didn't want to hold people up on set.

Somebody comes to your house. You know they're coming, so it's not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn't really know what it was about.

Some of the actors who came to cinema much later than me have tried their hand at direction. But, I don't intend to wield megaphone anytime soon, since it is tough and requires a lot of your time.

On 'The Spy Who Dumped Me,' it wasn't fear as much as it was feeling overwhelmed because there were so many moving parts. But I felt that I knew what I was doing. And on a movie like this, there's so much preparation that goes into it that by the time you were there, you had done months of planning.

I think I had my answers to the questions in 'The Witch,' and I had my answers to the questions in 'The Lighthouse;' I need those in order to write and direct them.

When you are scripting, the scene, the dialogues, everything comes before you, taking final shape. That is truly the most creative aspect of filmmaking and that is what I enjoy the most.

In a nutshell, directing 'The Gift' was all about understanding how the complex machine that is 'Game of Thrones' works.

It becomes very easy as an actor to immerse yourself when you're in the real places.

Rehearsing is more about blocking in the case of movies, I think, and blocking, of course, is very important to the beauty of a scene.

I just shot my first dramatic movie in France, and for those dramatic scenes that I shot, I would not want to look at those. There's a certain mindset you have to put yourself into for those scenes, and looking at the monitor would just take you out of it.

For me, it doesn't matter what kind of role I am doing. I just enjoy the process of acting and filmmaking.