Robert Zemeckis Quotes

In films people basically work for the camera, you know, and that's why actors can hate each other and not be speaking to each other and still look as if they're in love because really they're loving the camera loving them.

I'm not an actor that tends to care. I don't ask 'Is this a close up? Is this a master? Is this a wide? What are you doing? If I look up and notice the camera I go 'Oh, it's a big one today, must be an IMAX.' And that's kinda it for me because it doesn't affect what I'm doing.

Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.

You don't really think about 3D when you're acting. As a director, you do.

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

Now, learning how to make a movie is something you can figure out in about an afternoon. The physics of it, the marks, the lights, etc. What's hard to do is to suspend your own feelings of self consciousness. The natural actors can do that; they can become part of a characterization and learn how to maintain it.

If you take my performance or my understanding of the role and my appreciation for story and then dress it in CGI, that I guess becomes an action film.

The secret to film is that it's an illusion.

When you get to the end of a TV series, you feel totally out of sorts as an actor. You feel unfit; your voice box has collapsed on you because you've spent all day muttering into a microphone that's two inches from your head, and you feel desperate to spread your wings and do a bit of real thesping.

What happens so often as an actor is that you retain the information about the scenes that you yourself shot and you obsess over certain scenes that you found the most challenging or interesting. The rest of the film kind of falls away in your memory or it fades a little bit.

Most films, when you finish as an actor, you just go home.

When you're hanging there twenty feet off the ground, surrounded by green screen, and all you've got is the other actor and the wonderful Gavin Hood shouting instructions at you as to what's going on; it's a really unique experience.

I loved my role in 'Learning to Drive.' It was so different.

A lot of things in films are cheated with the use of camera tricks, so while it may feel unnatural to do, when you look at the result, you realise that it is right.

If you know exactly what your character knows, it's a drama.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

As actors, we're always asked to portray and react to these extreme circumstances, otherwise it's not interesting. They are agonizing things to think about.

Stage is definitely my home first and foremost - I still feel like I'm yet to earn my stripes on set.

I care about all the characters I play, and I get quite defensive about them.

Every actor has to love and loathe the character he plays.

I don't know what it is about me that gets cast in specific roles. Some people would say, 'You're just a pretty face,' but on 'Battlestar,' I'm not looking pretty every day. I'm pretty banged up.

Obviously, I play a villain in 'Downton Abbey'. As an actor, you want to get a variety of roles, so to be offered the part of Joe, it was perfect.

I did green screen for the first time! I wouldn't like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little - like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through.

Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.

When you do a play, or even a movie, you have weeks to finesse your character. You really understand why they do what they do. In TV, you get new material weekly about your character.