Director's Guidance Quotes

To perform on stage, you have to run through your paces till you are perfect. Despite the script and director, the actor makes or breaks the play.

Acting isn't always about the amount of talent you have, or your ability to cry on command. The point is, how well can you take direction? How well can you put aside your own ideas or ego and listen to the ideas of the director and the people above you, while not giving up the passion and drive of that character?

You can't act for the editing. You have to leave that to him. So you just go in and do the scene the way you think is right or whatever you're directed to do, and leave the rest of that technical stuff up to the director.

I keep joking that I'm in Jason Reitman Film School, because I keep asking him questions every single day about directing and I have a list of things that he's told me to do and not do and I definitely couldn't learn from a better person.

I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it.

You don't want to be the guy whose back's to the camera in the emotional part of the movie. So, you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera's doing.

Playing Michael Jackson's memorial service was one of the hardest things to do because it was literally a few days after he had passed, and Kenny Ortega, who was directing it all, was like 'You're gonna come out and sing.' So not only was I completely shaken up, I didn't know how I was gonna get through it.

You can't see any movie nowadays really without it having some sort of CGI treatment, albeit whether it's a creature or an environment, something like that. To make a point, sort of poetically in that case, but clearly it was a drama and how do you approach it? Well, I think what you're supposed to do is what the text dictates. What you bring to it and everything you need to know should be there, and pay attention to your director.

Ultimately your job as an actor is to perform however you're being asked to perform and there's many different procedures as an actor that you're going to run into that you should be prepared for and be ready to go to work and do the best you can and give the director the best thing you can to hopefully give him things on that day that could be shot preserved and out into a canned, then when they go into the editing room that's where a movie's made.

I've done three Broadway shows; once the curtain goes up, that's it. I mean, you prepare and you rehearse like crazy, but after opening night, the director's not there anymore, you know. He gives you notes during previews after each performance, but opening night, you're on your own.

I think any performing artist can do films, or, as a matter of fact, anybody out there in the street can be a film actor with no experience whatsoever if you've got a good director.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director's task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over. And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.

Making a film, you're in a really dark tunnel and the only kind of illumination is the shared experience you're having with your fellow cast and director.

I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn't honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.

As an actor you have to deliver what the director wants.

I think each character is different for me, but I am a director's actor. So if I get the right vision and right guidance from my director, I think sky is the limit for me.

As an actor, I do not come with preconceived notions. I am like clay that can be moulded or like a sponge that can absorb things. I do what the director wants me to do.

It's hard to give up that amount of control. It's scary to make yourself that vulnerable. Because you might do all kinds of things that are unplanned or are unexpected that maybe don't work, and you have to trust the director to see that and work around those things. I find it really scary.

When I did 'Gilbert Grape,' Lasse Hallstrom let me be on the set with him and in the editing room and in the casting sessions and so on. And so I got a firsthand, rather intimate, high-pressure look at how to make a film.

I'm a director's actor and go by what they say.

I've never like had a system or a program, I always think that I don't know how to act. I'll adapt to any director because I don't really have a set way that I do things. If a director hires me and says, "I want you to get started right now and do this research, this research, this research and I want you to have every line memorized before you ever show up for the first day," then that's what I'll do.

Once I sign up for a film, I just go by the director's instructions.

You're not directing an actor toward a thing they can't achieve. Because direction is elusive. When directors hold respect for the various craftsmen and -women who are telling the story, it's the greatest result. I think people do their bravest work when given an elusive canvas.

When I first started my acting career, I only knew what my acting teacher taught me. When a director gave me an impromptu direction, I didn't know what he wanted me to do, and I wanted to escape from the place.

When you're hanging there twenty feet off the ground, surrounded by green screen, and all you've got is the other actor and the wonderful Gavin Hood shouting instructions at you as to what's going on; it's a really unique experience.