Actor Abilities Quotes

I don't think one film is enough to showcase your talent or to show your abilities as an actor.

Paul Newman is not a very good pool player.

Doing 'Young Adult' was really reassuring to me in a lot of ways. It confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about great actors.

I wouldn't sell those New York actors short.

You have actors you've worked with previously, and you have actors you haven't worked with that you've seen in things where you know they can work in these parts. And then there are actors who blow you away, who surprise you.

There were a lot of lessons of production to be learned. On the page, the biggest thing you learn on any TV show is how to write to your cast. You write the show at the beginning with certain voices in your head and you have a way that you think the characters will be, and then you have an actor go out there, and you start watching dailies and episodes. Then, you start realizing what they can do and what they can't do, what they're good at and what they're not so good at, how they say things and what fits in their mouth, and you start tailoring the voice of the show to your cast.

I think the writing skills of actors are sometimes underestimated.

This is the great thing about TV is that when you discover certain strengths in an actor, you can then begin to exploit them in really fun ways.

I want to prove that actors are good, not just at working in front of the camera.

There's nothing wrong with an actor that can't improvise, but if you're going to improvise, you gotta make sure you got people that can play the game.

How was I going to make a man fly? How was I going to convince the public that an actor could fly?

I like the Baldwin boys a great deal. Alec is super-smart, super-articulate, almost too smart to be an actor.

People forget that we are character actors and we can do other things.

When you cast somebody, you write to their strengths.

I look at the action scenes as placeholders when I arrive on a script, knowing that I'm going to expand on them when I understand the constraints of the movie, the locations of where we're shooting, the abilities of the actors, and where we want to go with the characters.