The best compliment I ever had is, one day I was in Nashville, some disc jockey said, Hey, that sounds like a Tom T. Hall song. Up until then there hadn't been any such thing.
I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.