Mark Waters Quotes

As a director, you have to know what actors are doing. You're the one telling them what to do. The actors' job is to come prepared to the set, but sometimes, if they're beginning actors or people who are non-actors, you have to teach them how to act.

I like to have the actors do their thing. And then brief them what to do differently in take two.

To do a comedy team, it requires so much extracurricular stuff, so much compromise, so much intuitiveness to know what the other guy is doing. That's why it's so hard to do it.

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.

Actors know, with me they aren't going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

I always loved acting and improv and sketch comedy and theater, which I did at a local youth theater.

I feel I've always got to keep my stand-up because I never want to lose it.

I grew up playing sports. There is a clear line between success and failure.

It's not easy to act, but to direct to act. It goes form one place to the next. It's not heading for the punchline, and also it's not about scoring goals. It's about passing the ball, and the goals will come by themselves.

Theatre sports is the best improv training period.

I've worked with actors who were very helpful and a lot better than I was.

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.

Coaching is easy. Winning is the hard part.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.

One of the things I've learned is that baseball is something that happens over time.

Acting is probably the number one team sport in America as far as I'm concerned.

There's no substitute for live work to keep a band together.

My band is so dedicated, everybody works very hard. The No. 1 priority is the show, and it's pretty cool because we all pull together, and it's fun. It's like being on a sports team or something.

I see similarities in the sports I played growing up in the sense of how I tackle a role when I get a job. A lot of effort goes in on an individual basis. There is a lot of time spent by yourself working on your craft and what you have to do. But, at the end of the day, you're there to serve the movie just like you would the rugby team.

What I say about actors is you always want to find an actor you can play ball with. You throw the ball at them and you want them to throw it back. Your ball playing is a lot better when you play with good ballplayers, like any sport. Every actor I know feels the same way.

You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

I think as far as any kind of pressure on a football team or on an individual in professional sports really depends not only on that individual but the leadership they have on the team and the leadership they have on the coaching staff. A lot of times, they can divert some of those pressures off of the individual and off of the team.

Football players win football games.

I played baseball as a left-handed first baseman, though never as well as I did quarterbacking.

I started playing ball when I was a kid. My dad was a pro ball player and he passed on his knowledge to me.