Untrained 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.

A lot of the people I'm working with are not actors, or it's their first time in a movie. I'm not trying to shape performances, coax performances out of them. It's more like I want to put them in situations that naturally work or allow them to be themselves. If it's not happening, I'll just completely switch it up, rather than trying to make it work.

With acting, you see some of the kids are literally just off the street, untrained, and they are great. And others are off the street, untrained, and kind of horrible.

There are lots of people in the world who do have the advantage of going to a good drama school and just decide that they want to be actors. There's nothing wrong with an untrained actor; they have to get their training somehow, they have to learn.

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

I think a lot of good actors - for instance, Gary Sinise - have no training. His training was really entirely on his feet. I suppose you have to have an instinct for it.

Everybody works in a different way, and I've worked with actors that have no training whatsoever who are phenomenal.

On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.

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.