Jeff Nichols Quotes

It's difficult being a child actor. I don't think everything beautiful has to be exploited. Some things can be beautiful and left beautiful.

When I choose child actors, I chose them for their personalities. And then I work with their own vocabulary, so I'm not imposing text or dialogue on them: I'm just receiving.

It's an acting job - acting natural.

Casting young people is always so difficult, and they got it so right in 'Game of Thrones.' All the young actors are amazingly talented and so professional.

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

Auditioning is an entirely different part of what we do as actors.

When I hire actors I believe in their abilities.

We chose the actors thru a series of auditions when we started the show.

I realized that I needed to be anonymous on the street and somebody else on the stage. I had tried to put my street self on the stage, but what they want is an actor on stage.

A lot of child actors keep acting for the wrong reasons.

When child actors act well they're just reacting to situations, and they're acting very real because their life experience is so short; there's no history to fall back on.

Most movies use older actors, but I thought, if I could just put kids on camera and get them to be themselves, what could be easier?

I have a secret aspiration to be considered for a part where it doesn't matter what you look like to play it.

For me, there's a fine line between being a cheeseball and being a good performer.

I never dreamed that shooting a film would be so hard. There was less regulation then of child actors' hours. Even the concept of acting confused me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

A lot of the time, you're supposed to play to the top of your intelligence, as truthful as possible. But when you're on stage making people laugh, you're still acting. I think it helped me a bunch to go on stage two or three times a week.

A good actor is someone who knows how to take the part and make it real and make it honest and be effective in it. If it's in a funny movie and, as long as they are cast in an appropriate way, humor will come from it.

Children are often better actors than adults because they have a greater capacity for believing in a situation.

The director took my face in his hands and asked me to show him my teeth, as with a horse. This happened on a Wednesday, and by the following Monday I was shooting.

When I'm on stage, that's me. It's blown up, but that's me.

Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.

I've always held to the belief, though, that people who do too much acting training always look like they're acting, you know?

One has to be honest to the story and choose actors accordingly.

Once you learn how to free up in front of the camera, it's like nothing else.