Steven Soderbergh Quotes

Live-action is more fun for me, because you're acting with people. When you do voice-acting, many times you're not even in the room with the person that you're acting with.

I actually love actresses who look like they feel really natural. I like Patricia Clarkson, Laura Linney, Frances McDormand. Those are actresses where the second they show up on screen you're like, oh my gosh, this movie just got so much better.

Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.

I go through a whole process with the actors first, building and creating characters, then I encourage them to sort of live in that character when they're in the screen.

There is no single approach that actors take to their craft. And the best thing you learn is that you have to really listen and respect each actor's own process and own method, and that takes a kind of delicate, non-imposing patience and openness, I think, to get the very best out of the people you work with.

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.

I quite like it when you're working with people and you only get to know them through the scenes that you're doing together.

Ninety percent of my roles, I've had to fight for. It's only a really small percentage of people who get handed roles. But that can be quite scary. The good thing about auditioning is that you get to test yourself and see if you can play this character - you're also auditioning yourself. I enjoy seeing what the chemistry is between the people you might be working with.

The best and most talented directors - and I think it goes for people too - are the most confident in giving room to their actors and trusting them.

I don't enter into particulars with [Ennio Morricone]. I give him the feeling and the suggestions of the characters.

The script is really always the main attraction, and then there's whether there is an interesting character and great people around you. Those are the key elements that I look for.

I learned a lot, in terms of inspiring people. It became very clear to me, very early on, that directing a movie was a lot like being in a theater company.

Sometimes people come in as a director, and they just want the result, and they barely want that to tell you the truth. Sometimes directors barely talk to the actors; they are so focused on the cinematic elements of the movie, getting the shot and getting the lighting right or getting the CGI effects right and all of that, and they just trust that you are just going to do what you do.

It was a pleasure to have somebody else be the boss. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun any other way. He's been around and made a lot of movies and he's a great straightforward person to work for. And it was a pleasure to see other people to pick up characters that you've sketched out loosely on paper and make them into something fascinating.

I always get role models, people from real life who've lived the lives of the characters, and talk it through together, me, them and the actor, a lot. That helps. We certainly have our disagreements. But in the end we trust each other.

To get on screen with the Talking Asshole, quite a feat. And it's certainly going to be a cult film that people will be seeing.

You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

I'm really loving acting. I want this as a career. I'll still write music and collaborate with people, but I'm focused on the acting path.

You never really know what the director has got in his mind as far as the scene visually and art direction wise, etc. Even if you do, sometimes there's a side of things that don't necessarily gel the way people intend. So there a bit of a mystical entity, film.

Do the thing you're good at. Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something.

American Graffiti was the first movie where the director let me have any input. It was the first time anyone ever listened to me. George thought my character should have a crew cut, but I wasn't happy with that idea. I'd always had pretty long hair back then - in college, particularly - so I told George my character should wear a cowboy hat. George thought about it and he remembered a bunch of guys from Modesto, California, who cruised around, like my character, and wore cowboy hats, so it turned out that it actually fit the movie.

Doing a love story as a genre, and looking at love stories in movies, and feeling like I learned stuff about that, and that it broadened my view and my idea of what I can do, and how I can work with the people around me, that was such a great, really satisfying experience.

An awful lot of actors who are considered very good actors are not very good actors. There are people who just strike gold, they have intrinsic talent, but the point is that if they did train, it would not inhibit them. If they were with a good teacher, it would only broaden them more.

Filmmaking is a creative process so there is a lot of collaboration that happens on set between an actor and director, but at the end of the day, we're there to actualize the director's vision and things happen organically.

I discovered very soon, especially for movies, because I started in theater, that every director has his own universe. You have to be free enough to try to understand what he wants from you. Especially when that director has a tremendous personality. And I'm talking about people like Pedro Almodovar and Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen. And you have to adapt. If you don't adapt to them, you are off the thing.