Sergio Leone Quotes

I work with intuition. With interpreters. I have my own method. I know exactly what I want from actors. Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear.

Working with [Robert] De Niro taught me a lot about being an actor's director.

Its very hard trying to talk to an actor about how they should deliver lines, or cut their hair, unless it comes from a place of a strong point of view.

I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director.

After all these years, I'm starting to learn what a good director does, and I know what a good one does with actors: help us navigate finer instincts, help us when we're wrong, encourage us when things are great.

Good directors give short and specific instructions to their actors.

When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.'

I don't know what directing actors is all about apart from just casting well and then shaping their performances a bit, you know.

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.

Sometimes it only takes three words, so long as they're the right words, to direct an actor in the right way.

I think you have to be flexible above all as an actor; different characters have different demands, actors that you work with are different in their approach, or how you get along or don't get along with them.

I can speak to actors in their terms. Knowing I was an actor, they relax. You can have the best shot in the world - but, at the center of it, you still need a good performance.

A lot of times, directors don't know how to speak to actors, or writers don't know how to communicate.

With directors, some have a kind of in-built ability to just know how to work with actors and get the best out of actors, and some don't have a clue about acting. I think it'd be a good idea if directors put themselves in front of the camera, or even went on a six-week drama course, just to know a little bit about what that feels like.

I feel like this is the way I was meant to interact with acting. Which is as a director, and helping, working with actors to find their way. Facilitating their performances is so satisfying for me.

Every actor's different. It seems to me the older veterans, they don't need to hear as much. But younger actors need a little more feedback, a little more assurance, and that's fine.

My experience has been that actors always want to be directed.

As a director, you see something in someone; you know it's there, you just got to go get it. You do that with any actor. That's your job.

The actors make the film. They're the ones that take this theoretical movie that's in your head and make it real. The success of a film is entirely on their shoulders. I admire them, because acting is such a difficult thing to do, and I personally can't understand it.

If I was playing Carrie, I might have done differently but I felt like as my character. I mean, I'm definitely bringing myself to the role but I wanted to pay homage. I hope I did. We'll see.

With the films I've done, I've written on them, I've acted in some of them. And even ones I haven't acted in, I've acted them out just to be sure another actor can do them.

I'm a character actor, so as a character actor, I'm always looking for something interesting.

Usually I don't get specific advice from certain actors or actresses I work with.

The part that I felt most comfortable with going in was just working with actors and trying to make them feel comfortable and safe so they could find the performance. That part felt organic to me.

In a huge way, everything that I've done in my life has helped inform my ability to communicate with actors and direct them.