Eva Mendes Quotes

I like a lot of takes. I just go on until the actors get it right.

I don't like improvising on camera, particularly, but very often, a scene will not be working, and you rehearse it once or twice, and you realize something's missing. So I'll play with it until it makes sense.

You can't act for the editing. You just go in and do the scene the way you think is right.

In theater, you get to rehearse several weeks, you memorize everything, and by the time you open, you know what the play is. In film, it's almost the opposite. You do your work on your own and maybe have a couple of minutes to rehearse. When the camera rolls, you generally don't know what's going to happen.

As soon as you get two actors in a room and they're locking eyes, they're doing a scene.

Some actors come to the set ready to do their parts a certain way.

You might only get three takes to do a scene; sometimes it takes longer than that to find those moments.

On film, when you're driving home from the set, you realize what you should have done, but it's too late. When you're taking the subway home from your play, you realize what you did wrong, and you go back the next night and you do it better, or you screw it up again in a different way. It's a different thing altogether.

All I can do is keep my nose down and shoot the scene, shoot the scene, make it funny, make it funny, make it funny.

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick.

It's a fascinating job, to come in and be the most interesting person in an episode. Whoever the guest star is, that's the job - to maintain the interest and the focus for that 42 minutes or whatever, and it should be a huge relief to those people that are the leads in the shows.

I just arrive, they hand me a script and say, do it.

As an actor, I am meant to dabble with different themes and genres.

I walk into a scene, and I do the scene. That's my job. I don't have an objective. I have the words, and I have whoever I'm playing with.

On my first TV job I didn't have a clue. They'd tell me to hit my mark and I had no idea what they meant. You just pick it up. And ultimately, all it's really about is pretending to be someone else.

British actors are pretty good, by and large, at turning on at 'action' and off at 'cut.'

You have to have wonderful actors for material, particularly difficult material that requires complicated performances.

The day before I work, I don't like to even look at the script and let whatever happens happen on the set. But I do prepare a lot. I'm a big believer in that.

I enjoy working with actors so much and having the chance to be surprised by them.

Very rarely have I had the opportunity to say lines which I would have said even if I wasn't working in a film.

When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'

As actors, we need to do our parts exactly the way they have visualised it, because if we don't, we have to keep doing it many times over.

Actors love... at the end of the day, stars are actors. They love performing. And the more challenges I feel that you end up giving stars on the sets, the happier they are.

In film you have the opportunity of retakes or of giving your best profile. In theatre, it's right here, right now.