John Schlesinger Quotes

Anyone who has been given the gift of being opposite an actor who gives and gives, it just makes you better.

To be able to work with actors who are doing such good work, not only makes it easier for you, but it makes you better.

Improv is a very big thing for me. The thing with actors is I do not understand at all how they do what they do. I'm fascinated by it, and I have such a respect for it.

I love actors, and I love good acting. I love what actors do when they're good, and I'm a big acting fan.

Acting is a very artistic profession and there are thousands of people out there who think they are actors but there are very few who have real talent.

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

I'm an actor's director. I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life.

I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.

I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say.

The imagination is part of the arsenal that actors draw from.

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.

I know so many people who are so much better at it than I am, and I think I'm a goofier person rather than a serious, dramatic actress, so I probably belong in comedy.

I think acting is a gift.

It's funny, because I was trained as a dramatic actor at New York's Colonnades Theater Lab in the '70s, along with Jeff Goldblum, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. People I worked with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home in comedy.

I know there are some actors who are just brilliant at improvising and brilliant at just being in the moment and doing it there and then. I'm not one of those actors.

As an actor, your life experience is just as important as studying.

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

Most of my training at graduate school was geared towards drama, so I feel good about it, and I can do it, but it requires a lot more work from me. I feel like with drama... well, with all acting, really, you need to honor the truth of the situation.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

I think not every improviser is a good stage actor. Certainly not every stage actor is a good improviser.

I can't say that I haven't done some bad acting in my time. I have. Usually that involves what we actors call 'indicating,' when you twirl your mustache.

Any good actor is a character actor.

You have to be talentedly insecure in order to be a good actress. And then it's the director's job to make you more miserable and get a good take.

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

It's weird that I've ended up playing so many real live people, because I was never any good at impersonations at school.