To be honest, I don't usually do very much research, especially if I'm working with a director who also wrote the screenplay. They've usually done a tonne of research. And they'll tell you about it from their perspective which is better than doing your own research.
I really do like working very closely with a director and developing characters.
When you're really working well with a director then you can be as outrageous as you like and so can he. And there's no worry about it.
I look at the script first and who's directing it and then talk to the director to find out what his vision of the movie is and if it matches my vision and then we go after it.
When you're in sync with the director, on the type of movie you want to make, the arc of the characters, how the characters intertwine and interact, plotlines and story, and things like that, it really makes a difference.
My job as an actor is to try to do what the director wants me to do. I'm going to do everything I can to incorporate that note and make it work. If it doesn't work, I'll try this kind of thing, and "How do you feel about that?" If you are at odds with the director, neither one of you is going to get anywhere. You really do have to be able to make both of you happy. Even when I was younger, there were times when you have to find a way to make it work for both of you.
Working with a great director is wonderful for an actor because it means that you're not forced to take the advice of an idiot.
Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.
