Non-Professional Actors Quotes

Directors like Satyajit Ray, Rossellini, Bresson, Buñuel, Forman, Scorsese, and Spike Lee have used non-professional actors precisely in order that the people we see on the screen may be scarcely more explained than reality itself. Professionals, except fo the greatest, usually play not just the necessary role, but an explanation of the role.

You can get good performances in quite sizable roles from people who have never been in front of a camera, people who maybe have never been in front of a movie theater.

The freshest moments in my films have always been with unknown actors.

Shooting on the iPhone has become more of a directors' tool to lower inhibition of first-time actors and nonprofessionals. While it's helped me become more mobile, no pun intended - running around, finding tight areas and different ways of moving the camera - to me it's more about using this device to catch candid moments. That's the biggest thing.

There was never any down side to casting friends over professionals. It was always fun seeing folks who never performed before stretching their wings.

For working with non-professional actors, you have to have this particular desire to work with people who are reluctant to play in a movie. I like this relationship. I'm like a recruiter, an employment agency giving someone employment.

Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.

The thing I was up against in documentary films - was trying to get non-actors to convincingly play themselves in a way I'd come to know before the camera started rolling. And many non-actors can't do that convincingly, even if they just have to play themselves - they can't be naturalistic. And I would always want to recreate something I'd witnessed them do or say, and it just would be incredibly difficult because of the fact they weren't actors.

In L.A., though, people get off busses calling themselves actors, so many are really not professionals.

Using non-actors has its own rules and really requires that you allow them to do their own thing.

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen. So you're constantly calibrating to play to their strengths. And the key is to never ask them to do things that are beyond their abilities or are really far away from who they are at their core.

Street-casting - people like Katie Jarvis in 'Fish Tank,' spotted having a row with her boyfriend on a railway platform - has helped make actors raise their game. They have to.

I don't have any money to hire actors. I just need to get people who are going to do a good job being themselves.

Both the old and young Karamakates are portrayed by indigenous men, neither of them professional actors. The old shaman is played by Antonio Bolivar Salvador.

People think that the Italians invented neorealism, but actually, Humphrey Jennings did. He was revolutionary in using non-professional actors in his films, and he got extraordinary performances out of them.

It's very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen.