Ron Howard Quotes

I think the biggest advice I would give to any actor who's directing and also acting at the same time is don't even watch your coverage. You do a scene, and then, you know what you did; it doesn't matter what you look like.

After I directed, when I went back to being an actor, I was like, 'God, this is the life!' Because you only have to concentrate on one thing.

I don't think I know enough about acting to direct. You need to be a slight megalomaniac, not where you want to take over the world, but where you want to make every single decision and the buck stops with you. It's an awful lot of stress.

I am beyond critical of my own work. I always tell actors they have to watch themselves 4-7 times in a given scene before they can be remotely objective.

I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.

I appreciate my role as an actor much more after I direct because it's just easier.

I never really try to watch the movie of the things I've been in.

Some friends of mine who are actors feel directing shuts them down and kills all their impulses, but the worst thing for me is if I feel a director hasn't noticed.

I'm not one of these actors who feels a pressing need to direct, and I have no plans to do it.

I'm not like one of those actors who's a frustrated director.

When you're just an actor, you do your role, and then you're in your trailer. It's not as hands on as when you're directing. You live and breathe it.

Going to directing wasn't a reaction away from acting as much as it was a move towards something I always wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in the camera and how it worked and why one director would place it in this part of the room and then another would place it in that part of the room.

It would be a great vacation to act in a movie if I weren't directing it. But to do it while you're directing interferes with your concentration, and I wouldn't do that again.

Directing feels great; I'm really happy to be doing this.

I am an actress, not a producer; I can't decide release dates.

Once you turn on the camera, making a movie is making a movie. I don't care if it's $9 million dollars or $50 million dollars. You have bigger toys, bigger set, actors who are better paid, but once you turn on the camera, it's director and performance, and I don't find a big difference.

I would very much like to direct, star, perform, and just be a general auteur.

Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.

I would love to be able to get behind the camera and direct actors. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If I had to pay money to do it, I would do it... Directing is playing. Acting.

Directing requires great discipline, that ability to be in and out at the same time. The great ones I've worked with are like generals. It's a bit like a small war on that level. The great ones have that combination of freedom and control. I'm nowhere near that. There's still so much to do as an actor. I have enough to explore with that.

To be an actor and a director, I actually felt it helped me tremendously to be in the scenes of The Hollars, because as you can see, they're very intimate, very intense scenes. You don't want to break the actor's character and you don't want to break their momentum, so as the actor, I tried not to call cut as much as I could, and almost make it feel like a play, just set this environment where these amazing actors could do what they wanted to do.

I'd like to work more as a director. It's distracting being an actor, because - there's a lot of reasons. You find out you're going to work about six months before you start shooting, and then there's prep and there's post afterward, and there's stuff to do, and then suddenly you've gone a year without directing. There's a part of me that has to not be tempted by that in order to commit more to the directing. Honestly, the big reason for me to act is to observe other directors and learn from them. That seems to be the biggest draw.

As an actor, you are sort of only in charge of yourself. All you can really control is your performance. You don't know what they're going to do with it in the editing room, what they're going to cut out, which take they're going to use. You know, your control is very limited. As a director, it's ultimately your piece. You have a lot more responsibility, but you also have a lot more creative control. It's scary, but also liberating in a way.

I'm always writing, but directing takes priority over everything, unless the acting is a job that lifts that whole brand. If I get a part in a big film with a big director and I was going to direct one of my one films, I would take the former job because that job will only help anything that I then intend to do. I think in the long run, directing is the thing that will outlive everything else. Maybe that and writing.