I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight 'method' actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape - it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because 'Robin Hood' was one of my favourite films.
Before I start directing a show, I try to spend a few weeks hanging around the set, getting to know the crew and talking to the actors about how they like to work. Who is fussy? Who is left-handed? Who wants to go home early, and who is the perfectionist?
As actors, you meet people that you are working with and it's tricky. It's blurry. . . how do you decipher things? I have definitely dated [a co-star], oh yeah, multiple times. It's easy.
I personally believe the film turns out better when shot in one short schedule, plus it doesn't stress the actors.
It's hard to market a movie when you're at the mercy of critics and journalists.
The best thing for an actor to do is take your attention off of how you feel about it, and put it on striving to obtain a particular objective. The happy result is that it brings out all this unexpected stuff in yourself.
If you held a pistol at my head, I couldn't tell you who they're going to vote for Best Actor.
Despair is your friend in show business. I don't believe you can act if happiness is your lot. It's the ups that keep you living and the downs that mete out talent.
I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.
Whenever you read interviews with actors, they always seem to be given three months to do something - get fat, get skinny, learn card tricks.
Not taboo - it's just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd - they're movie stars; their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting.
Paul Newman is simple not an actor and possibly not even alive.
All great men are play actors of their own ideal.
Good actors never use the script unless it's amazing writing. All the good actors I've worked with, they all say whatever they want to say.
Any competent actor could have done what I did.
As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is.
I'm an actor's director. I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life.
I'm not one of these actors who feels a pressing need to direct, and I have no plans to do it.
I stopped doing that [photojournalism] and wrote some screenplays on speculation, because even though I wanted to direct, to direct you need a lot of money. Even for a cheap movie, you need film stock and equipment and actors.
It takes a minute to get use to the TV thing, and I have so much more respect for TV actors now.