Sam Esmail Quotes

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.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

The cool thing about doing a play is that the final interpretation of a piece is turned over to the actors.

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.

I try to really focus on the actors I'm working with and kind of read and respond to their behavior.

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

Any good production team is going to allow an actor to breathe life into the characters - that's why they hired that woman, that man, whatever the case.

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.

With more time I like to see the actors find something of their own places, so I can get their own ideas before I put mine in. Given they have a better idea more often enough.

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers.

I believe in giving actors the freedom to express themselves, and adding more to whatever is written.

Because I write the screenplay entirely and precisely, there is the danger that an actor might feel that this finite role is being imposed on them. I want the actors to feel that this is their own role, and that they can go back to point zero and develop this character.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

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

The only thing we are as actors are messengers. That's all we are. Correct? We are delivering the playwright's intention through the concept of the director. And I come on stage; if I feel confident in the role, then I give it away.

There's no doubt in the world that directing makes you a better actor. Me, anyway. There's no doubt in the world that it makes me a more collaborative actor.

I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.

Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it's just an extension of childhood play... Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don't need any director telling them, 'You really have to believe in it.' They believe in it completely.

My job as an actress is to make things work and come up with reasons of my own and not just fill in the blanks for anybody else, you know what I mean?

I'm attracted to roles that are unpredictable, and if I can get my hands on something like that, I'm thrilled. I like performances where you don't know what's coming, moment to moment.

Acting is a strange job because your control is very limited.

See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.

There is so much freedom I enjoy in theatre. In films, the roles are limited.

That is one of the reasons one enjoys acting. Now and again, you get scenes where you work with somebody really good and you have a good time trying to make it really work and really work well.

You try to pick good stories, and that's pretty much all the control you have as an actor.