Jonathan Mostow Quotes

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance.

On stage you need to emphasize every emotion. But on screen you need to tone everything down and make it believable.

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.

Good actors, you always know what they're thinking. That's why they're good actors.

The trouble with talking about acting is that it's like sex. It's enormously fun to do but just dreadfully embarrassing when you have to talk about it.

When there's no technical problems, if you did the right casting, and the scene is well written, the actor will give you a strong performance with his intuition right from the start.

When you're performing, you're playing to the back row. With acting, you have to be more nuanced.

I always work with the tempo of the energy of the character, whether he's fast or slow, or heavy or light.

Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.

How do you play 'righteous'? Do you just kind of stand up straighter? What does that mean as an actor? You don't really play a quality.

I'm interested in the acting and staging of specific emotions, and so I work with actors. It's a small proportion of what I do, but it's always what people seem to focus on.

I feel like everything you learn as an actor growing up is wrong. You're supposed to hit your mark, find your light and know your lines. Those are all things that just make things wooden, dull and boring.

It's a fine line. If you withhold too much, you come across as wooden - as I've often been described in some movies. Fair enough. I believe that the best performances are the ones that an audience has to search for.

I like method actors who don't focus on the glamorous side, but on realistic acting.

I am totally a director's actor.

The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.

A lot of games and voiceover projects, they're not giving the actor a lot of context. The actor, no matter how good they are, might not be able to deliver a performance that fits the action.

As an actor, my body is my tool to flesh out the roles I play.

There is an art to acting, and there are techniques that are acquired. You can be as emotional as you'd like, as a person, but figuring out ways that you can bring specific emotions at specific times and have them be true, and relating to someone as someone that they're not, is a lot.

Performance is one thing which has to be good because you're an actor.

In the end, only a good actor stands out; if I am not a good actor, I won't stand out.

When doing films, ones acting skills are polished, and the actor delivers a better performance.

To be a good actor, you need to be able to emote with your body.

An actor is defined by the choices he or she makes.

It is how you approach the role given to you, and how you relate to that character and then how you adapt and gel into that role which makes you a good actor.