Performance Coaching Quotes

You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.

I had many, many mentors that I worked with. Music teachers, choir directors, directors in summer stock or in regional theater. You know, people I was able to work with repeatedly and learn from who were really sort of appropriate people for me to work with at a given time in my development as an actor.

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.

I always like being a director in terms of giving acting notes and punching up on the fly.

I'd like to be a director who gives my actors complete freedom while collaborating with them to find performances.

A lot of actors aren't particularly good directors. And they're not particularly good with other actors. That's kind of a fallacy.

I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.

I learned one thing from De Niro: He taught me to listen. Nobody says anything strictly from the script. It's improvised. It was the best piece of advice I have ever gotten in my life. It has helped me through the past thirty years.

What a director should be doing is making it appear as though there was no script.

I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing.

People think a director teaches acting. But in good films a director doesn't.

If there's one thing that I know how to do, it's talk to actors. From what I have experienced working with so many different directors in so many different things, a lot of them don't really know how to talk to us.

I still want to direct. That's my main love, and that comes from being obsessed with subtleties and people.

I've had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let's you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, 'Well, put your hand over here.'

Who I always refer to as my acting mentor when I got into junior college is an acting professor by the name of Tom Blank. He took me under his wing, and he was that strong male figure. He was tough love, but he believed in me, saw everything that I had.

It's natural for any actor that segues into directing to be an actor's director. You know how to relate to the actors.

I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then.

I like a director who is very observant and is watching what I'm doing and noticing what I'm doing but is giving me time to figure it out. They don't jump right in and give you a note before you've had time to really search on your own with how to do a scene. I like a director that encourages me to be playful.

I would say that maybe directors who act as well are easier with actors. I'm not saying that all directors have this, but sometimes you'll come across a director who sort of looks at an actor a bit like a kind of untrained horse that's been let out of the stable, like they might buck him.

I think what makes a good actor's director is somebody who understands what I'm doing and is respectful of it, but who also has a vision and is directing me toward their vision in a way that feels productive.

With directors, some have a kind of in-built ability to just know how to work with actors and get the best out of actors, and some don't have a clue about acting. I think it'd be a good idea if directors put themselves in front of the camera, or even went on a six-week drama course, just to know a little bit about what that feels like.

Any director who's also acted understands the fact that every person has a different process and has to be approached differently.

I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.

My grooming as an actor took place after working with top directors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, BR Chopra and Shakti Samantha.

There is still a big onus to be coached. I understand the best teams don't need a huge amount of coaching, but that's when a coach should decide not to do coaching.